ISLAMABAD, 7 March 2005 — Over 200 Pakistanis were still imprisoned in different jails of Afghanistan awaiting repatriation, diplomatic sources here said.
However, Kabul says that almost all Pakistani prisoners have been set free.
The Afghan government had set free 368 Pakistani detainees in September last year, who, it said, were the last of more than 2,500 Pakistanis captured after the fall of Taleban government in 2001. But diplomatic sources claim that over 200 Pakistanis are still in the custody of Afghan warlords in different parts of the country. These warlords often refuse to abide by the Afghan government’s decisions, the sources said.
President Hamid Karzai seeks to establish strong brotherly ties with Pakistan but some leaders of Northern Alliance have always created hurdles in his way, they said.
A source said that responding to Islamabad’s recent demand of sending details of remaining Pakistani prisoners, Afghan government has acknowledged that 45 detainees are yet to be set free but their actual number is far higher.
Sources said that dozens of Pakistani prisoners died in notorious Shibarghan prison of Abdul Rashid Dostum. Dostum himself admits that 200 prisoners died in Shibarghan jail but mostly of wounds suffered in the fighting.
Islamabad is expected to raise the issue at higher level with Kabul for the release and repatriation of these detainees, the sources said. However, sources said that keeping in view the waywardness of Afghan warlords and their resort to independent course of action at times, any immediate breakthrough on the prisoners’ release is unlikely.
Meanwhile, the United Nations is to resume repatriations of Afghan refugees from Pakistan today after a winter break, with about 400,000 expected to return this year, a UN official said in Kabul yesterday.
The UN-assisted repatriation was halted over the winter from Pakistan because of the weather, United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) spokesman Tim Irwin told reporters here.
The UN continued to help refugees return from Iran but numbers have been small because of the bitter cold during Afghanistan’s harshest winter for a decade.
Around 300,000 refugees are expected to return from Iran this year, Irwin said.
In 2005, UNHCR will give a travel grant of up to $34 to each returning Afghan to help them reach their destination and a further $12, up from $8 in 2004, to help them reintegrate.
Since the program began in 2002, over three million Afghan refugees have returned to Afghanistan with UNHCR assistance — an operation that was the largest repatriation of refugees in the UN agencies history, Irwin said.
