An Afghan refugee camp near the Pakistani city of Peshawar which had caused a controversy between Pakistan and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees has been closed.

The last group of more than 1,000 from the nearly 100,000 new refugees who lived in the Jallozai camp were shifted Tuesday to a site in the Bajaur area on the border with Afghanistan.

Pakistan had opposed their settlement at Jallozai, where more than 200,000 people had already been living for 20 years when new refugees, driven by a severe drought, started arriving in June 2000. Islamabad argued that the new refugees should be housed inside Afghanistan. But the U.N. refugee office rejected the idea that refugees could be adequately cared for in the country they were fleeing.

The squalid Jallozai camp became so overcrowded that relief workers described it as a humanitarian nightmare.

The controversy was still going on when Pakistan's concerns were further compounded by a new influx of Afghans who began fleeting their homes after the September terrorist attacks in the United States and the U.S.-led military strikes against Afghanistan.

After Pakistan joined the war, the controversy was resolved, with the new refugees being shifted from Jallozai to camps closer to the border with Afghanistan.

Some information for this report provided by Reuters.

Email this article to a friend
Printer Friendly Version