TORKHAM, Afghanistan: Perched on top of lumbering trucks overflowing with all their possessions, Afghan families are streaming back to their home country at unprecedented rates, leaving international organisations scrambling to provide aid as winter approaches.
The flow of returnees from neighbouring Iran and Pakistan this year, estimated by the United Nations to number more than half a million, is straining the capacity of the government and aid agencies, even as violence uproots more Afghans around the country.
At Torkham, the busiest border crossing between Afghanistan and Pakistan, nearly 170,000 Afghans have returned this year, according to the U.N., many of them citing harassment by Pakistani authorities as relations between the two countries have deteriorated.
Islamabad has stepped up pressure to send people back and numbers have risen sharply in recent months as Afghan-Indian relations strengthened and those between India and Pakistan soured.
Lines of colourfully decorated trucks pass through the border gate at Torkham, navigating the mountainous passes with returning refugees clinging to piles of household goods, sometimes with a family cow nearly buried in the back.
A cluster of white tents only a few hundred meters from the border marks the first facility operated by the U.N., the Afghan government, and other aid agencies to provide aid for returnees before they look for a home in a country many have not seen in years.
Here, and at other sites nearby, families are offered medical checkups, bundles of basic supplies and food.
In September, the U.N. issued an appeal for millions of dollars of emergency funding to help returning refugees and other internally displaced people in Afghanistan, but so far the fundraising has yet to reach its goal, said Mark Bowden, the U.N.’s humanitarian coordinator in Afghanistan.
“Out of the $150 million that we requested, we’ve only got $48 million so far, and our costs are certainly going to be running quite high over the winter period,” he told
