03 May 2004	Monday	12 Rabi-ul-Awwal 1425

PESHAWAR, May 2: Most of the Afghan refugees returning to their homeland are suffering from psychological ailments, according to Azizuddin Himmat, president of the Psychological Association of Afghanistan.

"As most of the homes of the returning Afghans have been completely demolished due to heavy fighting back home for about 25 years in some cases, now when they return to Afghanistan and find their homes in ruins, they become extremely depressed," said Himmat.

According to him, 98 per cent of the returning Afghan refugees suffer from psychological problems when they come to know that the houses have been reduced to rubble. His opinion was that the main problem haunting these people is lack of health care centres in the war-shattered country. He said there was only one 50-bed hospital in Kabul to treat those suffering from psychological ailments.

Not this but the total number of only six psychologists /psychiatrists at the same centre at Kabul was grossly insufficient considering the mushrooming number of patients. The other Afghan cities do not have mental hospitals and the doctors have mostly settled abroad.

The majority of these people lived in North-West Frontier Province and Balochistan, where most of them earned their livelihood doing manual labour. After the installation of the Hamid Karzai-led interim administration now they are returning in good numbers.

According to the UNHCR, more than 150,000 Afghan refugees have returned so far to their country since the present repatriation campaign was launched on March 2001. Another Afghan intellectual also described the situation as pathetic.

Devastated by prolonged war and internal bickering, it would take years for the returning Afghans to settle down, he observed. Even the well-off Afghans rushing home from European countries weren't happy when they saw the deteriorating situation in their country, he said.