QARABAGH (Afghanistan), June 3: Some one million Afghans have now flocked back to their homeland this year in what is set to be the biggest return of refugees ever seen, according to the United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR).

More than 840,000 refugees had returned to their homeland by Saturday night under a joint UNHCR-Afghan government programme which was launched at the beginning of March, UNHCR spokeswoman Raghild Ek said on Sunday.

Ek earlier told AFP that an additional 146,000 are thought to have returned independently since the beginning of the year. The current rate of returns is running at around 15,000 a day.

The vast majority are returning to pick up the threads of their lives from Pakistan, but their immediate joy is soon tempered as they are confronted with the task that awaits them.

Thousands have returned to the Shomali Plains to the north of Kabul which saw some of the fiercest fighting of the civil war.

The Taliban razed large sections of Afghanistan’s traditional fruit bowl to the ground as the area became the front line between forces of the fundamentalist Islamic militia and the Northern Alliance in the late 1990s.

Mullah Gul returned to his home village of Qarabagh from the Pakistani city of Rawalpindi on Thursday but he will have to spend the foreseeable future with his wife and 10 children in tents.

“We saw the situation was becoming normal (in Afghanistan) so we came back. This is our home,” he told AFP.

“But the Taliban have destroyed everything. They have ruined our homes, our trees and our vineyards.”

Grapes, plums, apples and peaches used to grow in bountiful quantities in the Shomali Plains, but the Taliban scorched the earth as they torched and bulldozed villages suspected of harbouring supporters of the late Northern Alliance military chief Ahmad Shah Masood.

“Our house was burned down and I do not have the money to buy timber to rebuild it. We have nothing now except the wheat (from a UNHCR resettlement programme). But I am prepared to do anything to feed my family.”

Gul is bitter about his time in Pakistan where he eked out a living collecting and selling empty cans. Many Afghan refugees have complained of harassment at the hands of Pakistani police.

“We were treated like slaves. If they wanted your shirt you would have to give it to them.”

Nur Khan, who returned to this village about 40 kilometres north of Kabul 10 days ago from a refugee camp near the northwestern Pakistan city of Peshawar, recalled the terror of his forced departure.

“We only had time to leave with one pair of clothes and had to flee to the mountains. Now we have come back with only a few blankets,” said the father-of-five.

Little more than the foundations of Khan’s home are still standing after the Taliban torched the thatched roof and all the supporting beams.

A stack of kindling outside was gathered from the withered vines which used to help support the family.

The area was also heavily mined during the civil war. De-miners have cleared much of the land but 12-year-old Amir Jan recently lost a chunk of his leg and suffered burns when he triggered a landmine as he wandered into a disused house while tending to a flock of sheep.

The UNHCR has warned that the rapid returns, which have far outweighed original estimates, are putting a severe strain on resources.

“We are currently getting around 100,000 a week,” said Ek. “We could well have up to two million (returns) this year.”

It will soon surpass the 1.2 million returns to Afghanistan in 1992 which followed the downfall of the Soviet-backed Najibullah regime. The ensuing chaos under the mujahedin government meant that many of those were short-lived.

The Afghan Diaspora is the largest in the world. Governments and agencies have differed over the exact size but some three million Afghans are still thought to be living abroad.—AFP