(AKI) - The United Nations refugee agency said on Monday that some 276,700 Afghans returned to their homeland in 2008 through its voluntary repatriation programme, 99 percent of them coming from neighbouring Pakistan. The remaining 1 percent of returnees came from Iran and other countries, Ewen MacLeod, Acting Representative of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Afghanistan, told a media conference in Afghan capital of Kabul.MacLeod attributed this year's numbers to three main factors: the high prices of food and fuel which have strongly impacted Pakistan's economy, the closure of the large Jalozai refugee camp in the Pakistan's North West Frontier Province, and the "changing" security situation in Pakistan, particularly in NWFP, where the majority of Afghan refugees live.
MacLeod noted that over 5 million people have returned to Afghanistan since 2002, representing a 20 percent increase in the country's overall population.
Some 4.3 million of them were assisted through UNHCR's voluntary repatriation programme for Afghan refugees, the world's largest for the past six years.
"I think it is very clear to everybody that an increase in a population with a refugee return programme of that dimension would represent a very sharp challenge for even a Western industrialised country," said Macleod. "We are certainly not aware, in recent history, of any country that has absorbed so many people in such a short time. The solidarity demonstrated by the Afghan population in reabsorbing these huge figures is remarkable and without precedent anywhere else."
UNHCR's Afghan repatriation programme has now been suspended for the winter and will resume next March. The agency estimates there are still 2.8 million registered Afghans living in Pakistan and Iran.