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American Morning

America's New War: Refugees Building Up on Pakistan Boarder

Aired September 26, 2001 - 12:05   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
AARON BROWN, CNN ANCHOR: Now let's go to Pakistan. As we said, on the border of Pakistan we have refugees trying to get in. We've seen various reports about how many.

Nic Robertson is there.

And, Nic, good evening to you.

It's evening there.

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Aaron, yes, United Nations officials still trying to get good cooperation with the Pakistani government here to allow them to set up monitoring facility at the boarder and help facilitate and flow of refugees into Afghanistan -- into Pakistan. They are very concerned that there could be as many as a million refugees headed for Pakistan, 400 thousand they say could be headed for Iran and another 100 thousand or so could head for borders to the north of Afghanistan.

They say that they need 80 thousand tents. They'll have to take on -- United Nations will have to take on another 700 staff in Pakistan alone to help accommodate what they -- this potential influx that they are seeing.

But so far the Pakistani government has not allowed them to set up positions at the border. The U.N. says it estimates 10 to 20 thousand people stuck across the boarder from where we are here, 80 miles away. They say half of those in sheller, half of those outside of shelter.

The Pakistani government has said, however, that people, refugees on the other side, in desire need. Those women and children who are beginning to suffer will be allowed to cross without the official paperwork into Pakistan. But at the moment, it is an expectation rather than a reality among the U.N. officials, an expectation of worst to come -- Aaron.

BROWN: Are the Pakistanis simply afraid that they are going to be overrun by refugees? Is that they're -- why they're resistant?

ROBERTSON: Pakistan really, over the last year and half, has really begun to resist the number of refugees coming from Afghanistan. There was an outflow through the last winter, people escaping the war and escaping the ongoing drought, the drought now into its fourth year. Pakistan's real problem, however, is that it has about two million Afghan refugees who have been here since in 1980s, when the Soviet Union occupied Afghanistan, and that -- and Pakistan has said now for the last six months or so that it cannot handle anymore refugees, and even before the current crisis, was effectively forcibly repatriating some Afghans back to Afghanistan.

When we were there recently we talked to Afghans who had literally been driven back to the border by the Pakistani officials and told to go back to their homes.

So Pakistan essentially saying that it is at capacity, but the UNHCR today launching an appeal for $250 million, money they say they'll need to meet the crisis that they think may be about to happen -- Aaron.

BROWN: Nic, when we have talked, you and I, over the last few days, we've talked about the refugee issue as a stream or a trickle. I gather that that has changed now, that you are starting to see tens of thousands of people. Is there anything in particular that has caused the change?

ROBERTSON: Aaron, I think perhaps it is still best described at this stage as a trickle. What's happening that has changed is that that trickle that has been arriving at Pakistan's border without proper documentation, because Pakistan's border is sealed, is now building up on the other side, and that is the sort immediate concern for U.N. officials, that those people are building up on the other side, some 10 to 20 thousand, and they're building up in area where there is not proper facilities for them. There are concerns about sanitation. There are the concerns about the possibility of diseases spreading. The temperatures here still hot throughout the day and cold at night. So those without shelter, the U.N. concerned about them.

That perhaps is the change, that there is a build up on the other side, and I think U.N. relief officials beginning now to get themselves organized to begin to put out the message that they see a problem in the next couple of weeks -- Aaron.

BROWN: Nic, thanks.

Nic Robertson in Pakistan today reporting on the refugee problem, crisis perhaps, building on the border with Afghanistan.

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