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Pakistan, Afghanistan to document refugees

Pakistan and Afghani­stan have announced plans to work together over the next four months to try to document about one million Afghans who are believed to be living illegally in Pakistani cities. The documen­tation effort is aimed at trying to determine the deadline for when all Afghan refugees in Pakistan are expected to be safely and vol­untarily repatriated.

The protracted Afghan refu­gee situation in Pakistan has become a major irritant in bilat­eral relations because Pakistani authorities are increasingly blaming the refugees for a rise in criminal and militant activity in parts of the country. The United Nations estimates there are 1.6 million registered refugees, and about one million who remain undocumented.

Islamabad’s renewed coun­terterrorism efforts include measures to repatriate both official and unofficial Afghan refugees from Pakistan. Over the past three months, police raids against Afghan-dominat­ed neighborhoods and refugee camps have helped spur an exo­dus of more than 50,000 Afghans back into Afghanistan. Most of them are said to be undocument­ed Afghans whom Pakistani authorities consider a security threat.

Pakistan wants all registered Afghan refugees to leave by the end of 2015. But the sudden in­crease in returning Afghans has already worried the government in Kabul, which is facing severe budget and security problems at a time when there is less inter­national assistance.

However, this week’s high-level discussions in Islamabad appear to have eased tensions and led to a more cooperative effort to document unregistered Afghans.

Chief Commissioner of Af­ghan Refugees Imran Zeb Khan tells VOA his institution will lead the process of documenting more than a million Afghans. He says a joint six-member com­mittee of Afghan and Pakistani experts will oversee the massive exercise.

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Ihesiulo Grace

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