May 31, 2008	Saturday	Jamadi-ul-Awwal 25, 1429

NOWSHERA, May 30: The sprawling Jalozai refugee camp was shut on Friday after over 70,000 Afghans had vacated the site.

The camp was established near Nowshera in the early 1980s when Pakistan saw a massive influx of Afghans displaced by the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

Officials in the Commissionarate for the Afghan Refugees (CAR) said that the camp had been closed as the dwellers had gone back to their country under the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees’ voluntary repatriation programme.

The government had decided to close the camp by the end of August last year, but after reluctance on part of Afghans, the date for its closure was extended. One of the oldest refugee camps, which also served as training facility for the warriors in the Afghan war, was jointly managed by several Jihadi groups that also run Al-Dawa University.

After Kacha Garhi in Peshawar, Jalozai was the second largest refugee camp in the NWFP. Kacha Garhi camp was closed down last year. District Administrator CAR Maqbool Shah Roghani said that some 1,600 unregistered families living in the camp were also deported to Afghanistan.

He said that 616 Turkmen families attached with carpet weaving had been given two months extension for staying at the camp. The government, he said, would relocate these artisan families to appropriate location to impart skill of hand-knot carpet to the local aspirants in Peshawar.

Mr Roghani said that infrastructure including the university building, schools, health facilities and tubewells had been handed over to the district revenue officer Nowshera.

Sources said that the provincial government had directed the revenue department to acquire land at the abandoned site for the establishment of campus of an engineering university.