PESHAWAR, Feb 15: The government is chalking out a strategy to shift some 1.7 million scattered Afghans from urban areas to registered refugee camps along the Pakistan-Afghan border.

A senior government official told Dawn on Friday that soon after the beginning of the repatriation period, likely to kick off in March, the government would launch a massive operation to bring scattered Afghans from urban areas back to camps.

The official said that the repatriation process will be in three phases: in the first phase, voluntary repatriation will take place; in the second, refugees will be motivated to leave Pakistan, and in the third, they will be forced to go back.

“The scattered refugees have two options; either they can shift to new camps or return to their country,” an official source said.

Having dismantled the makeshift Jalozai camp, sources said, the government would soon vacate Katcha Garhi and other camps situated on the outskirts of Peshawar.

“After Jalozai, the inmates of sprawling Katcha Garhi, Nasir Bagh and Shamshato camps will have to go,” the official said. Established in early 1980s, the three camps shelter some 200,000 refugees.

According to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, some 583,393 refugees have settled outside camps in the NWFP, 412,000 in Punjab, 360,000 in Sindh (mostly in Karachi and Hyderabad), 200,000 in Balochistan and 80,000 in Islamabad.

The agency has constituted two teams for Islamabad, Rawalpindi and Karachi to enrol the refugees for repatriation.

Sources said the United Nations was also planning to shut down the Internally Displaced Areas camps in the war-torn Afghanistan.