Afghan refugees bearing brunt of mismanaged reconstruction effort

In a July 10 Newsweek blog, Katie Paul describes the dire circumstances facing Afghan refugees.

In one telling example, Paul writes of a Refugees International (RI) team that found in the northwestern area of Taghi Naghi a haphazardly planned land allocation site for returning refugees. The government had ignored U.N. recommendations and built shelters in the desert as part of the $2 million project, one of 55 planned across the country. To make waters worse, access to water and employment was blatantly inadequate.

According to a recent RI report, Afghanistan’s worsening food crisis and security situation have made life more difficult for returnees. In addition, Paul writes that “an impending Pakistani threat to bulldoze camps in their country by the end of 2009 has contributed an added time pressure to deal with the problems.”

The report says an ill-planned and coordinated reconstruction effort lies at the heart of the refugee crisis and it urges international donors to help resolve the situation at a joint U.N. and Afghan conference in Kabul in November.

“What we’d like to see is the returnees being integrated into the mainstream national programs,” said RI advocate Patrick Duplat.

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