April 22, 2002	Monday	Safar 8, 1423

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BAJAUR, April 21: With the return of former monarch of Afghanistan King Zahir Shah to his homeland after spending about 30 years in exile in Italy, the voluntary repatriation of Afghan refugees living in different camps in Bajaur Agency has picked up tremendously.

Well-placed sources told Dawn that with normalcy prevailed in the war-ravaged country and its former king also returned to bring the Afghan nation to a single platform, more than 5,000 refugees voluntarily repatriated their families to Afghanistan during the last few days.

These 5,000 displaced people were among those 200,000 Afghans who had been living in different refugee camps scattered across the agency for the last two decades, the sources said, adding, that as peace and normalcy took roots in the war-battered country, more Afghans would opt to go back to their homeland.

The repatriation of refugees from the Bajaur Agency remained sluggish during the last two weeks, but it picked up as the former king returned to take up the responsibility of convening the Grand Assembly and unifying the multi-ethnic Afghan nation.

A high-ranking official of the Afghan Refugees Commissionerate while talking to Dawn confirmed that thousands of refugees had repatriated during the last three days. These refugees, who mostly belonged to the two eastern provinces Kunar and Nangarhar, had also received the UNHCR assistance before leaving for their country, he said.

A monitoring office has also been set up near the Nawa Pass along the Pakistan-Afghan border to check those refugees who might try to sneak back into the Pakistani territory and also to reinforce the repatriation process, the official said.

The official source said that arrangements were being finalized to repatriate around 125,000 more refugees next month, and hoped that the process would pick up with each passing day.

A refugee couple, Gul Wali, 60, and his wife Zaitoon Bibi, 50, who lived in the oldest refugee camp of Shahjehanabad and left for Afghanistan on Saturday, told journalists at the time of departure that they had spent the most difficult time of their life in Pakistan.

“This miserable time was the most memorable and it would always remind us of the respect and honour the Pakistani brethren extended to the refugees,” they said with their eyes sparkling with prospects of a new life in their own country.

The couple said that the Durand Line separating the two brotherly countries should be abolished at the earliest so that the people could interact with each other more freely.