PESHAWAR, Nov 8: The situation in Afghanistan has forced about 100,000 Sikhs and Hindus to migrate to India and European countries for good during the last decade.

Interviews with the representatives of the Sikh community in Peshawar showed that the post-Sept 11 situation had caused an increase in the number of those leaving Afghanistan.

About 70 Sikh families — around 450 individuals — have entered Pakistan through unfrequented routes since the US and its allies started bombing of Afghanistan.

Gurdwara Sripanja Sahib, Hasanabdal, has provided shelter to 30 displaced Sikh families who fled Afghanistan, leaving their business and property abandoned.

The shrine management told this correspondent that 40 families, out of a total 70, had migrated to India while the rest were awaiting visas.

Amer Jeet Singh, 22, who left Jalalabad when the US jets pounded some targets there, said that almost 90 per cent of about 500 Sikh families in the city had fled.

“Life is now difficult in Afghanistan. Unless lasting peace returns to Afghanistan, we will never go back,” he said.

“I, too, will be moving with my family to Amritsar,” he said, adding he had filed his case with the Indian High Commission in Islamabad.

After India, Afghanistan used to be the second country that had a majority population of Sikhs, most of them were settled in big cities like Kabul, Kandahar and Jalalabad. There were 10 Sikh temples in Kabul alone.

Their bad days started when warring factions locked in fighting to capture Kabul after the fall of the last Communist regime of Dr Najeebullah.

Their property and temples in Kabul and other cities were either looted or destroyed. Nine of 10 temples in Kabul were destroyed. A historical temple in Khost was ransacked by religious zealots when the Hindu fanatics demolished Babri Mosque in Ayodhia in 1992.

Afghanistan’s only church in Kabul where the diplomatic staff attended services, was also demolished.

Dr Saib Singh, member of the Peshawar city district council, said that so far 6,000 Sikh families had shifted to Pakistan and India, out of around a total of 7,000 families, selling their property at throw-away prices. Hindus too, he added, were leaving Afghanistan.

The externally displaced Sikh families never sought refugee status in Pakistan, said Perkash Chand, a representative of the Sikh community in Peshawar, adding that they cannot live in refugee camps because they did not use packed food and also needed a lot of water.