- QUETTA, Pakistan (Reuters)
- Fearing fighters from Afghanistan's embattled hard-line Taliban may try
to flee into Pakistan, a senior official said Monday the southwestern
border
could soon be sealed even to vulnerable refugees.
-
- All Afghan males aged 20 to 40 were being denied entry
to Pakistan in case they were fighters, said a senior official from the
Baluchistan provincial government.
-
- "We are being very strict now, maybe we will even
stop the vulnerables for the time being," he said.
-
- "All Afghans coming from the other side of the
border
should be stopped, but we are checking very carefully and some special
cases may be allowed in."
-
- Since the latest Afghan crisis blew up in the wake of
the September 11 suicide plane attacks on the United States, Pakistan has
stated that it would not open its border to Afghan refugees fleeing
conflict.
-
- Border security has been tightened with army units in
position and machine gun nests staring out over no-man's land.
-
- But thousands of people have made it across, either
legally
or illegally, to languish in squalid refugee camps.
-
- Widows with children, the sick, and the injured have
been allowed to enter Pakistan.
-
- Following the rout of the Taliban by the opposition
Northern
Alliance across much of Afghanistan in the last two weeks, Pashtun tribal
leaders in the country's south marched against the hard-line militia Monday
after U.S. Marines began to land in force near the movement's spiritual
stronghold of Kandahar.
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- CONCERN FOR REFUGEES
-
- The United Nations refugee agency's Kris Janowski said
he was concerned.
-
- "We see great nervousness on the part of the
Pakistani
authorities which manifests itself in making it more difficult to register
new (refugee) arrivals," he told Reuters.
-
- Janowski said some 350 families, or 1,400 people, had
been barred from registering at Killi Faizo staging camp, located next
to Pakistan's official Chaman Afghan border crossing and home to around
5,000 people, and were stuck in the open with no tents or shelter in
sub-zero
night-time temperatures.
-
- "Yesterday, for the second consecutive day we were
barred from registering males aged 20 to 40," he said.
-
- "All these men are shut out of the staging site
and a growing number of people are roughing it in the cold. We appreciate
the efforts to ensure no fighters get in the camps but they are an
important
pillar in these families."
-
- The United Nations warned in September that as many as
1.5 million Afghans could try to flee military strikes as the United States
attempted to flush out fugitive militant Osama bin Laden, prime suspect
for the September 11 attacks, and punish his Taliban protectors.
-
- That influx has not materialized. The senior Baluchistan
official said around 120,000 Afghans were languishing in three ramshackle
camps on a dusty plain just over the border inside Afghanistan.
-
- "If there is some change in the situation on the
ground we may see quite a lot of people coming this way," said
Janowski.
"We are prepared for much bigger numbers of people."
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