LOCKED-UP AFGHANS LURED BY DRUG MAFIA

PESHAWAR. Majority of Afghans languishing in different prisons of
NWFP has been arrested on charges of drug smuggling.

These imprisoned people, in search of a better future, were entrapped
by the Drug Mafia to carry out this heinous business.

This astounding revelation was made by Lal Gul, Chairman Afghan
Commission for Human Rights while talking to The Frontier Post on
Sunday.

He said that this information is based on a survey conducted by Free
Legal Aid Centre.

He said that so far he had visited several jails of the province
including Peshawar, Attock, Nowshera, Mardan, Swabi and Charsadda
jails where a total of 442 Afghan refugees have been locked up.

These Afghan prisoners include old, young and minors as well as women.

Lal Gul further said that the drug barons after giving jobs handed
them over responsibilities to take the drugs to some destinations at
Rawalpindi or Lahore.

He said that most of the children and women detained in these jails
had lost their fathers and husbands during the Afghan jihad and they
had to look after their families.

Finding no other way to earn livelihood for their families, they out
of compulsion had to adopt this unlawful way to have their both ends
meet, Lal Gul maintained.

Some of these detainees belong to Nasir Bagh refugee camp where their
families live for the sake of their imprisoned relatives.

If they were freed, the survey noted, their families would
voluntarily shift to Afghanistan.

Highlighting the raison d'etre of the survey by the Legal Aid Centre,
chairman of the Afghanistan Commission for Human Rights said that
during the Afghan jihad, jihadi groups had established peace
committees in their camps and offices aimed at both monitoring the
dubious activities of the Afghan refugees and solving their problems.

But when the activities of these jihadi groups ceased, there existed
no proper forum to address to the refugees' problems.

So this centre was established to take care of the imprisoned Afghan
refugees by collecting information and making arrangements for their
release.

The Legal Aid Centre has so far got released 16 children from Attock
Jail and one from Peshawar Jail, Lal Gul remarked.

Lamenting the role of UNHCR in alleviating the problems of refugees,
he said this body has done nothing towards the detained Afghan
refugees in Pakistani jails.

Giving suggestions towards the solution of the problems faced by the
imprisoned Afghan refugees, Lal Gul said that if the elders and elite
living in the refugee camps were given the right to act as guarantor,
the plight of the locked up refugees could be minimised.

He further said that these poor Afghan prisoners could neither afford
services of lawyers to defend themselves in a court of law nor
arrange guarantors from among Pakistanis as the court do not accept
guarantee of other nationals.