17 November 2004	Wednesday	04 Shawwal 1425

PESHAWAR, Nov 16: When he will finally leave Pakistan after two decades, Rahman Gul, an Afghan refugee, will do one last thing for his dead brother; he will take his remains to his homeland for a reburial.

The bearded, 68-year-old fruit-seller says he will dig up his brother's grave and collect his body to rebury it in their ancestral graveyard in the Laghman province.

Gul lives in Kacha Garhi, a dusty camp on the outskirts of Peshawar. The camp is home to tens of thousands of Afghan refugees who have fled drought and conflict since the Soviet invasion in 1979 up to the rule of the Taliban.

In a sprawling graveyard near the camp, refugees have in recent weeks dug up dozens of graves. Some are driven by emotion, but others just want to save the graves of their relatives from being bulldozed. Authorities in Peshawar have issued notices to camp residents to vacate the area to pave way for a planned government housing scheme.

Refugees are also exhuming bodies at the Nasir Bagh camp, about 5km to the south of Kacha Garhi, where another housing project has been planned.

A cleric at a mosque in Kacha Garhi said that although Islam did not ban exhumations, it should only be done for a solid reason.

"If they are doing this because they have been told by the government, then it's all right. Otherwise it is not good," said Mohibullah. "It's an insult to the dead."

Gul said he loved his brother, who was killed in the war Afghan Mujahideen had fought against Soviet forces during the 1980s.

"It's an expression of people's love for their dead relatives to take their bodies and bury them in their own villages," said Gul, who wore a black waist coat and white turban.

A 19-year-old construction worker, Noor Mohammed, was equally committed to his grandfather who also died during the resistance to Soviet invasion.

"These martyrs are assets of the nation. They should be taken there so they know that the objectives they fought for have been achieved and Afghanistan is free," Noor Mohammed said.

The country is still wrecked by drugs, lawlessness and poverty, but last month Afghanistan held its first direct presidential elections, installing interim president Hamid Karzai for a five-year term.

At the dozen or so carpentry shops in Kacha Garhi, workmen saw wood and hammer nails into planks to make coffins to meet the demand. Coffins in various sizes and types of wood are propped up on display, catering for the rich and the poor like. Prices vary from Rs600 to Rs1,800.

Kacha Garhi was set up in 1980, and at its peak, more than half a million refugees, mainly from eastern Afghanistan, lived there. Now it is home to about 80,000.

At the graveyard, some excavated plots lie empty, but hundreds of others are still marked with colourful flags over tombstones, as a continuing mark of respect for the dead.-PPI