PAKISTAN: Integrated Afghan refugees want to stay on

[ This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations]

LAHORE, 21 Feb 2005 (IRIN) - Gul Hakeem, 52, is a respected shopkeeper in the Shadman Market area of the eastern Pakistan city of Lahore. He is frequently called upon, as a respected elder known for his cool head, to settle minor arguments. His cloth shop in the market's basement area is a favourite gathering spot, not least because of the tales and the jokes Hakeem can tell. He tells them in Punjabi - the dominant language of the city.

Only a slight accent to his Punjabi vowels and his love for freshly brewed green tea gives Hakeem away as an Afghan. While those gathering around him enjoy cups of the sweetened, milky tea, Hakeem pours his green tea from a small kettle into his lacquered cup and allows the aroma of his homeland to drift across the crowded shop as he talks of his days as a young man.

Hakeem came to Peshawar, capital of Pakistan's North West Frontier Province (NWFP), among the first wave of refugees from Afghanistan in 1980, only months after the Soviet invasion of his homeland. He stayed at a refugee camp in the city for a few weeks and then, searching for both adventure and a livelihood, reached Lahore the same year.

"I fell in love with the city," he told IRIN. "In some ways, it reminded me of my home near Herat, even though everything was different. Yet, even though I spoke little Urdu at the time, people were friendly and the resentment against Afghans that came later had not yet set in."

Hakeem did odd jobs for about a year, but by the end of 1981 was able to rent a shop, selling cloth he brought in from Peshawar. He has expanded his business since then, buying the shop he rented in 1990. He married an Afghan woman from another refugee family in 1985 and the couple, with four children all studying at local institutions, plan on staying in Lahore.

"It is my home," Hakeem said. "What happened in the past is now only a part of the stories I tell."

According to Tajammul John Muneer, coordinator of the Afghan Refugees Programme at Caritas in Lahore, the implementing partner for refugee programmes with the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), there are currently around 7,000 Afghan refugees in the city. He also believes that "at least some among these will go home". A large number of refugees returned home in 2003 and 2004 under UNHCR-assisted programmes.

However, it is also clear that a large number won't. Many of the refugees who came from Afghanistan are now well established in the city and have strong links to local families. They naturally have little wish to close flourishing businesses or abandon jobs to return to a country where economic insecurity and the aftermath of war are still plainly visible.

"Look, the fact is that the Kabul I knew as a young girl is no longer there," said Raheema Bibi, 32, who left Afghanistan with her parents when she was 15. "It is a different place. The families we knew have moved away. So many have been killed that I know no one there."

Her parents have since died in Peshawar. Bibi added: "For me and my three children, this city is where we now want to live. I have parents-in-law and my children's grandparents - as my husband Wali's family is here. They too came from Afghanistan, but are now happy to stay here."

Bibi and Wali still talk to each other in Dari, the first language of both families. However, they speak to their children, Shamsa, 10, Waleed, 8, and Hashim, 5, mainly in Urdu, indicating a break from the past and the start of a new life.

"The older children understand Dari, but they don't speak it," Wali said. "I would like them to learn, but Urdu is more important for them right now."

As Tariq Khan, coordinator of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) in Peshawar and in charge of programmes linked to refugee affairs, told IRIN: "Many of those who came as refugees are now in fact a part of their communities in cities such as Lahore. As with every Diaspora, there are people who move away from their roots and into a new setting, never to return home. It is hardly surprising that should happen in the case of the Afghans as well."

The close linguistic and cultural links between Afghans and Pashtuns made amalgamation easier. However, even in Lahore, Afghans have managed to blend in and in some cases, even married into Punjabi families.

"My parents were not happy when I married Kulsoom," Habib Khan, 33, said. "But then they came to know her and like her. Now that things are calmer, I hope to take her and our son to visit my parents, who are still in Afghanistan, but then we will return to our lives here."

While some Afghans, such as Habib, have moved away from their own communities and into mainstream society in the city, most of those still staying on are based in settlements around the Garden Town area, or Bedian Road, where quarters in "katchi abadis" (slum areas) are made up of Afghans.

The bright, pink and green skirts of the older women, or the blonde hair and green eyes of small children, as they play a game of street cricket with Lahori youngsters, give them away as Afghans, even though many have in fact been born in the city and have never known their ancestral homeland.

Some among these communities say that, even with the UNHCR's help, they are too poor to return. Others seem unwilling to risk the uncertainty and possible economic suffering the shift would bring, happier to continue with the small business or jobs as guards, carpenters or vendors that they have found locally. The reputation of Afghans as good businessmen has also held true, with a large number now dominating markets, such as the cloth bazaar at the Auriga Centre in Gulberg.

These Afghans seem certain to remain a part of the city scene, and are known by the generic name of "Khan", a popular clan-name among Pashtuns and Afghans. Certainly, many among them show little interest in returning. They maintain that the homeland many left as children is now nothing but a distant memory - and that it is in the historic city of Lahore that they now hope to build their futures and bring up their families, with ties to Afghanistan having grown weaker over the years since they left it far behind.

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