Afghans go home despite insecurity

By Sanjoy Majumder BBC correspondent in Kabul

Nearly 200,000 Afghan refugees have returned home from Pakistan and Iran since January this year, according to the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR).

Refugees who return will have much work to do

Marking World Refugee Day, a UNHCR spokesperson said the numbers were encouraging, given the worrying security situation in Afghanistan.

But aid agencies have warned that growing violence in some parts of the country threatens to derail much of the relief and reconstruction work.

Earlier this week, the UNHCR and the governments of Iran and Afghanistan signed an agreement to help repatriate refugees in Iran.

A UNHCR spokesperson in Kabul, Maki Shinohara, told the BBC that thousands of Afghan refugees were returning every day.

Staring new life

Almost 200,000 have come back to Afghanistan since January this year - mostly from Pakistan.

The Afghans had fled there to escape the fighting back home.

Some like Mukhtar, who returned on Thursday, were going back to their homeland after more than a decade.

There is great fear about the future

"Yesterday I came back to my country. In the past 20 years we've faced war and disorder," he told me.

"Thank God there's been peace and security for the past year and a half. Now I would like to go back to my village, rebuild my house and start a new life."

But that may not be quite as easy as it seems.

Taleban resurgence

Many of the refugees find themselves returning to a country devastated after years of fighting with a shortage of houses, jobs and food.

Added to that is the growing sense of insecurity.

In the north, clashes have been taking place between rival warlord factions while there are fears of a resurgence of former Taleban forces in the south and east.

Aid agencies say the growing violence threatens to disrupt their efforts to provide relief to ordinary Afghans and rebuild the country after more than 20 years of war.