Official Offers Afghan Refugee Plan

The new chief of the United Nations refugee agency said Tuesday that he hopes to send as many as 1.5 million displaced Afghans back to their beleaguered homeland, a move that would require close cooperation with the Taliban regime and a sharp increase in aid to that pariah state.

Ruud Lubbers conceded that the step is controversial, especially in the United States, in part because of the Taliban’s just-completed destruction of two priceless ancient Buddhas and other statues and its harboring of terrorism suspect Osama bin Laden.

The Taliban, a fundamentalist Islamic group, took control of most of Afghanistan in 1996 and has fought a civil war since with remnants of the previous government. It has imposed a strict reading of Islam under which it prohibits women in most cases from working or going to school.

Lubbers, the U.N. high commissioner for refugees, told reporters that he informed U.S. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell of his plans during a State Department meeting Monday. He said Powell did not protest the move, even though it appears to contradict years of U.S. policy.

“I didn’t ask for a green light,” said Lubbers, a former prime minister of the Netherlands. “I told him I would do it.”

The State Department declined to comment directly on Lubbers’ plan to negotiate with the Taliban, saying only that the U.S. government was consulting with the U.N. agency on the status of Afghan refugees.

“We are working with Lubbers to improve the condition of the camps in Pakistan,” where most of the 1.5 million refugees live, said a department official who asked not to be quoted by name for diplomatic reasons.

If Lubbers decides to send home the Afghans, he will have to negotiate with the Taliban over procedures and conditions for their return. Lubbers also said the world community will have to provide sharply increased humanitarian aid to alleviate widespread suffering in Afghanistan caused by a persistent famine.

“The international community has to be much more generous in support of humanitarian aid to Afghanistan,” Lubbers said. “I’m talking about people; I’m talking about starvation.” He said it makes no sense to stop feeding the refugees because they have crossed the border into Afghanistan.

Lubbers reasoned that many of the people who fled civil war in Afghanistan may no longer qualify as refugees under international law now that the fighting has died down and the Taliban controls about 95% of the country. Many of them would return to their villages if they could get adequate food supplies there, he said.

The U.N. and most countries classify a person as a refugee if he or she has a reasonable fear of persecution at home. People hoping to improve their economic condition do not qualify.

“When there is a war, we consider people fleeing to be prima facie refugees,” Lubbers said. “The moment the fighting is over, you have to make a further assessment” to determine the reason the individuals are reluctant to go home.

In the case of Afghans, he said, many refugees--especially women and girls--have every reason to fear persecution at the hands of the fundamentalist Taliban. But others may be willing to return home if the food supply and other conditions can be improved.

Since the fighting has tapered off, Lubbers said, Pakistan has become increasingly reluctant to continue hosting the refugees.

In Geneva on Tuesday, a spokesman for the U.N. agency said Pakistani leader Gen. Pervez Musharraf assured visiting U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan that his nation will not immediately end all assistance to the Afghans but made it clear that he does not want them to stay permanently.

The spokesman said conditions for newly arrived Afghans are “deplorable” in the Pakistan camps.

Lubbers said his agency is seeking a substantial increase in the approximately $245-million annual U.S. contribution to its budget. He conceded that a closer relationship with the Taliban could make that difficult.