To root out Taliban, Pakistan to expel 2.4 million Afghans

Like more than 100,000 Afghans, Maulana Mohammed Afzal has lived in the mud-baked lanes of this refugee camp ever since he fled war-ravaged Afghanistan 26 years ago. The camp is home for his family, but Pakistan's government says it's a threat to national security.

In its most recent effort to clamp down on Taliban activity within its borders, Pakistan has announced that all 2.4 million Afghan refugees, most living in camps, must return home by 2009. This and three other camps near the Afghan border, which together hold 230,000 refugees, are scheduled to be closed by the end of August.

"The problem of cross-border militancy is closely related to the presence of ... Afghan refugees in Pakistan," Munir Akram, Pakistan's Permanent Representative to the United Nations, wrote recently to the UN Security Council. "These camps have often given rise to complaints that they provide shelter to undesirable elements and Taliban."

Many disagree, however, saying Pakistan's Afghan refugees, most of whom are Pashtun and share the same tribal ethnicity as the Taliban movement, are only being made a scapegoat.

The debate comes as Robert Gates, in his first visit to Pakistan as US secretary of Defense, met with President Musharraf in Islamabad this week to discuss the Taliban's expected spring offensive in Afghanistan.

As pressure mounts on Pakistan, analysts say the fate of the Afghan refugee community – the world's largest – is an important piece in the puzzle of regional militancy. Simply shifting them across the border could flame tensions.

"[T]he Afghan government is not capable ... of providing for their rehabilitation. It will be a source of more conflict inside Afghanistan," says Aimal Khan, a political analyst at the Sustainable Development Policy Institute in Islamabad, which recently completed a study of Afghan refugees.

Set against such a backdrop, a recent burst of violence radiating from Pakistan's tribal zone, including two attacks in the capital, Islamabad, has placed renewed attention on refugee camps as potential hotbeds, though no Afghan suspects have been identified.

The Jalozai camp, 18 miles from Peshawar in northwestern Pakistan, looks like a small, bustling city, with a mile-long bazaar offering a wealth of goods. But a cloud of controversy hangs over its dirt lanes. According to Western media reports, the camp has incubated several high-profile terrorists, including Ramzi Yousef, the mastermind of the first attacks on the World Trade Center in 1993, and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks. FBI agents raided the camp in October 2002, arresting four Afghans they said were connected to Al-Qaeda.

Today Jalozai and other refugee camps, which are spread throughout the Northwest Frontier Province and Balochistan, help fuel the Taliban resurgence, the government says.

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