Refugees come home in hope for better future

Most have nothing to go back to. But, putting their faith in Allah and hoping for a brighter future now that the Taliban have gone, Afghans are coming home in droves.

At Pul-i-Charkhi, or "bridge of wheels", east of the capital Kabul, around 10,000 returning refugees are being processed daily at the busiest transit centre currently being run anywhere in the world by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

The centre, a series of large tents in a dustbowl stretching along the road from Pakistan, accounts for half the Afghans returning to their war-wrecked country every day, putting enormous strains on the crushed infrastructure and far exceeding the UN's most optimistic expectations.

Most have no houses to live in. They arrive in tall Pakistani trucks or brightly coloured buses, carrying electric fans, doorframes and decrepit furniture.

"They have to race against time to have a roof over their heads before the harsh Afghan winter begins," UNHCR spokesman Yusuf Hassan said yesterday. "They have to rebuild their houses when they get home."

Pul-i-Charkhi is a people processing factory, with the number of returnees since the Taliban fell at the end of last year already topping 700,000 compared with the UNHCR's expectations for a total of 800,000 for the whole of 2002.

The refugees pull in, some squatting on top of their possessions three metres above the ground in the backs of trucks, with hordes of ragged children in tow.

They file into a clinic for health screening and then through a mine awareness demonstration where they are shown the sort of munitions they can expect to find in their fields after 23 years of war, ranging from U.S. cluster bombs to Russian anti-tank mines.

Next is the registration tent, where after shuffling before a series of desks, being fingerprinted and vetted, they are handed $20 per person, or $100 for a family.

Half of that money "and sometimes all" goes to the Pakistani drivers who brought them from Peshawar or Quetta across the border where many have spent a decade or more in exile.

Children then pass through the UNHCR's "torture chamber" – the inoculation tent.

A chorus of shrieks breaks out as the youngsters, many without shoes, get their shots for measles, polio or other diseases.