Atle Hetland This week, I visited Peshawar again after a long time. The Pathan hospitality was as overwhelming. But there was a slight sad touch. The first time I went there was in 2000. I remember it as a bustling city, with many international organisations, mostly working with refugees. When we came up from the UN organisations and NGOs in Islamabad, we were a bit envious because everybody spoke so highly of Peshawar and its people. In Islamabad, we were just working overtime and going to formal receptions Peshawar is still lively and the traffic is worse. The city keeps paying its prize for its geographical location and the international affairs, as it has had to do at least for the last 30 to 40 years. On several occasions, Peshawar and the province have been overwhelmed by huge influxes of refugees. After 9/11, about one and a half million refugees returned to Afghanistan in a years time, from Peshawar, Quetta and elsewhere in the country, and a similar amount in the following years. But then, in the last couple of years, new refugees have arrived. This time they are termed 'Internally Displaced Persons, IDPs, because they are from within the country, the border areas with Afghanistan and from Swat. The causes are mainly international. Again, Peshawar has had to cope with hundreds of thousands of new forced migrants. They will stay for a short or long time. Some will go back while others will stay for good or, they may try to have a home in the city, where women, children and old men are better off, while, at the same time, some of the young men can commute to the beautiful but backward tribal areas for livelihood. Peshawar, Quetta and other cities and towns will serve as makeshift and permanent homes. Some forced migrants are relatively lucky. They can move in with relatives and friends; even some Afghans, who come across the border, can do that. But the majority is at the mercy of the ordinary, often poor, Pakistanis, the government, and local and international organisations. Donors help, but they can never be trusted fully because all of a sudden their funds may dry up. Currently, most of them seem to have less funds for the refugees, even for IDPs. They are now focusing on the flood victims and the aftermath of the disaster, with rehabilitation and reconstruction efforts of 15 to 20 million people over several years. Indeed, we are all for this assistance, and we can only pray that the donors stay focused and that they work with the government, in addition to NGOs. It is a fact that international organisations such as the United Nations at best only reach 20 percent of the needy; hence the need for working with the government at all levels. The Afghan refugees and even the IDPs from the border areas are still many, in all about close to four million people. The donors should provide increased assistance to them, not run away from them even in times of the floods, remembering again that the refugees, and indeed the IDPs, are mostly a product of policies and actions taken or demanded by foreign forces. Many of the some one and a half million refugees in Peshawar and surrounding areas in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KPK) still live in refugee camps or villages. The IDPs, too, in 2009 statistics said to be one point one million (excluding the flood victims), have also been provided shelter in camps, some of which were earlier used for refugees, such as in Jalozai and Kachagari. Pakistan hosts the highest number of refugees in the world. This is often not realised. The longest refugee tragedy in the world is the Palestinian refugee tragedy, which is over six decades old. But the Afghan refugee tragedy is over three decades old. When refugee situations become protracted, we seem to see the situation as 'normal, without considering that life for the displaced is never normal. True, the refugees have found some ways of coping and of living their daily lives in some kind of normalcy. But consider, for example, that a refugee is not automatically granted a work permit or access to education in the host country. Refugees need to have an income, even those who stay in camps, where after all only some services are provided. Refugees are forced to take black market jobs and undercut locals to get temporary day labour jobs, or run a kiosk or shop in collaboration with a citizen of the host country. Such arrangements are always temporary, even if they go on for many years. In Pakistan, the Proof of Registration (PoR) Card gives the right to stay in the country, but it is not a work permit. Some refugees have relatives at home, in the Middle East or elsewhere, who send money to them. But this means that the protection and rights of refugees are less than what other people enjoy. The majority of the refugees in Pakistan lives outside camps, where UNHCR, the United Nations Refugee Agency, provides minimal assistance. Many children go to school in refugee camps. During the Taliban time, education opportunities for girls were much better in the refugee camps in Pakistan than in Afghanistan. For urban refugees, the education in self-help schools was usually very poor. Secondary education was always a problem because Pakistan only enrols a limited number of refugees in its schools at that level. The international community gives assistance to primary education, but not to secondary education, which is the responsibility of the government. However, some refugees have been able to go to the university in Pakistan, sometimes funded by scholarships. In recent years, the international community has also provided assistance to refugees through a project named Refugee Affected and Hosting Areas Initiative, including locals and refugees, but the project has come late and is small in spite of a number of United Nations donors being involved together with the governments SAFRON Ministry for Refugees and the Commissionerate for Afghan Refugees (CCAR). Whereas the international community is always essential in providing advice, monitoring and financial aid during and after disasters, such as to Afghan refugees, IDPs and flood victims, we should not be lured to believe they are the most important actors. The most important actor is always the countrys government, at central, provincial and local levels, with ordinary people, who are in a position to help, and, often not realised, the displaced persons themselves have to take the suffering and find solutions themselves. A countrys government is responsible for all people living within its borders As I mentioned at the beginning of this article, it was a bitter sweat visit I had to Peshawar this week. I couldnt help thinking what the city had been, and might have been, under other circumstances, with fewer but well integrated migrants, yes, maybe it is wrong to use the term refugees. There is need for better security and a more predictable and optimistic future planning. That is what people everywhere need, and they basically want to do it themselves and in their own way. Not with only aid from outside. The Pathans are no less proud than others The writer is a senior Norwegian social scientist currently based in Islamabad. Email: atlehetland@yahoo.com