Editorial: Refugees to stay in Pakistan till the end of 2006

Pakistani education minister Jawed Ashraf Qazi has stated that since peace has been restored in Afghanistan, the 3.4 million refugees remaining in Pakistan should return home. He added that Pakistan had done a great deal for the Afghan refugees over the past decade and a half, but that they had become a burden on the state. The war has ended in Afghanistan, so the refugees will now face no problems if they go home, he said. However, Asif Shahzad, a spokesman for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, UNHCR, said that based on the tripartite agreement signed by Pakistan, Afghanistan and the UNHCR, the refugees can remain in Pakistan up to the end of the current year. The statements by Qazi are a ploy by Islamabad to put pressure on Kabul as a result of the criticism that the Afghan government and people directed at President Pervez Musharraf, who dismissed a list of addresses of important Taleban members harboured in Pakistan as “ridiculous” and “nonsense”. As a military general, President Musharraf is used to issuing orders and diktats. He came to power as a result of a coup, whereas President Hamed Karzai was by the people. Diplomatic ethics forbid allow heads of states from insult each other. We have let bygones be bygones, as a neighbouring Muslim nation, yet Islamabad continues to needle us. The Afghan refugees are not a burden on Pakistan, since they eke out a living through their own hard labour. We have no enmity with that country – the Pakistani people have been good to us - but if some of its ministers do not like us, that is purely their own concern.