ISLAMABAD, May 31: The number of refugees returning to Afghanistan from Pakistan under the UN Refugee Agency’s 2003 voluntary repatriation programme has crossed 100,000 mark, with more than 16,000 people heading home in the last week.

According to a press release, 1,867 refugees completed the procedures for receiving assistance from the UN High Commissioner for Refugees and left for Afghanistan, raising the total since the beginning of this season’s programme to 100,395.

“I am already late, the earlier the better,” said Ghulam Farooq, an Afghan refugee who ran a pharmacy in Abbottabad and was taking his family back to Kabul.

He had visited Afghanistan before taking the decision to move home. “Those who were repatriated last year are successfully running their businesses,” he said.

The number of refugees asking UNHCR for assistance to return to Afghanistan was low at the start of the repatriation season in March when tensions due to the Iraq war affected the region. However, the number rose strongly in May, with about 15,000 refugees returning each week. In the latest Sunday to Thursday week, 16,651 Afghans were assisted home.

The number returning from Pakistan could rise again next week as the school year ends and more families feel free to go back to Afghanistan.

In Iran, which also hosts about two million Afghan refugees, 74,044 have returned during 2003, 39,110 with UNHCR assistance and the rest on their own. Some 2.1 million Afghans have gone home from the two countries since the beginning of 2002, 1.65 million of them from Pakistan.

The refugees are coming from across Pakistan, with about two-thirds from the urban centres and the rest from the refugee camps that were established as early as 1980.

The UNHCR made provision to assist up to 600,000 refugees to return this year, but the total for the season, which is concentrated in the May to August period, is expected to be lower. The rate of those returning depends largely on security and economic conditions inside Afghanistan, which vary greatly from area to area.