Pakistan to shift thousands of Afghan refugees to a new camp near border

By RIAZ KHAN
Associated Press Writer

PESHAWAR, Pakistan – Pakistan plans to move more than 80,000 Afghan refugees to a new camp on the border with Afghanistan and hopes to send them back home when the fighting there is over, a government official said Sunday.

Starting Nov. 25, the refugees will be moved from the Jalozai refugee camp to a facility 5 miles from the Afghan border in the Bajur Agency, a tribal administrative district in northwestern Pakistan, said Waqar Maroof, a spokesman for Pakistan's Afghan refugee agency.

Other refugees from Jalozai, a teeming camp 30 miles east of Peshawar in northern Pakistan, will later be moved to another tribal area on the border, he said.

Pakistan says more than 3 million Afghans live in the country, many of them since the 1980s, when forces of the former Soviet Union occupied Afghanistan. Since then, more have fled drought and the harsh rule of the Taliban, and most recently the U.S. airstrikes.

Following repeated pleas from the United Nations, Pakistan has reluctantly agreed to give the group official refugee status, which should make it easier for them to receive aid. But the government wants them close to the border so they can be repatriated at the end of the conflict.

Pakistan has thrown its support behind the United States in its military campaign in Afghanistan, launched Oct. 7 after the Taliban refused to hand over Osama bin Laden, the chief suspect in the Sept. 11 terror attacks.

AP-WS-11-11-01 1156EST