RELUCTANT RETURN -- AFGHANS PREFER TO STAY IN IRAN.

It should have been a scene of happiness and celebration. Hundreds of Afghan refugees were heading home, after years of sheltering in neighbouring Iran. But as they crossed the wasteland at the Dogharun border point between Iran and Afghanistan, pushing carts loaded with their belongings, their faces were etched with anxiety and worry.

Their return was being organised by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), under a programme that offers the Afghans various incentives to return home.

However, the only welcome for them as they crossed the border was a group of bored Taliban border guards, their heads wrapped in the folds of their turbans against the clouds of dust that blow constantly across this remote border point. Buses occasionally roared through the checkpoint, carrying other refugees to towns further into Afghanistan, such as Kabul or Kandahar.

Since April, when the UNHCR programme started, some 100,000 Afghans have left Iran. Up to 4,500 have been crossing over each week at Dogharun and other border points, according to the agency.

It sounds a lot. But that is a tiny proportion of Iran's Afghan refugee population -- estimated to be anywhere between 1.4 and two million. Certainly far less are returning than the Iranian government hoped would when the UNHCR programme began.

Most of the Afghans still in Iran are refugees from the civil war that has gripped Afghanistan since the mid-1990s and the emergence of the Taliban movement. But Iran has sheltered successive waves of refugees since the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 and that hospitality has imposed a massive strain on the country. The Iranian government now openly says it is time for the Afghans to go home for good.

But many Afghans are reluctant to return to a life under the strict Islamic code imposed by the Taliban. Some are also worried about continued fighting. Chief among their concerns is the Taliban's virtual ban on female education.

"Here, my daughters can go to school," said Hafiz, one of 7,000 Afghans living in the Torbat-e-Jam refugee camp, in Khorasan province, some 30 miles from the border. Despite the limited prospects for his family at this isolated camp, he said they had no intention of returning.

Even refugees who had signed up to be repatriated told The Middle East they were worried, as they assembled at the UNHCR's transit camp at Dogharun, about 100 metres back from the border. Ismail Haideri said he and his family had no choice. "There is no work for us here. And Iran wants us to go back." He added: "They are giving us some money, so God willing, we will be all right."

Once he returns, the UNHCR will give Ismail Haideri $20 for each member of his family. The refugee agency was also providing the family with plastic sheets to help with temporary repairs to their home, along with water containers and wheat.

UNHCR's spokesman in Iran, Mohammed Nouri, accepted that many Afghans have doubts about returning, but he said they were under no pressure to do so. "The UNHCR makes sure that all the repatriation is voluntary, so they are going entirely of their own free will." He pointed out that Afghans are also entitled to apply for asylum if they believe they will suffer persecution back home and many have done so.

The story of the repatriation programme is further complicated by the fact that some Afghans who have returned home may not have stayed. Due to persistent insecurity in Afghanistan, many have returned to Iran several times. And in the early stages of the programme -- when a $40 return incentive was being offered -- many Afghans were going back home to claim the money and then returning to Iran.

In fact, on the day The Middle East spoke to refugees at Dogharun, several groups of Afghans were seen heading back across the frontier into Iran.

In September, Iran and the UNHCR decided to continue the repatriation programme for at least another three months. But when she visited Iran to review the programme, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Sadako Ogata, admitted that its success is not "assured".

She actually arrived in Iran via the Dogharun border post, in Khorasan province, after holding talks with the Taliban authorities in Afghanistan.

Mrs Ogata said she gave Taliban officials a "very clear message" that the issue of schooling for girls was critical to the future of the UNHCR's repatriation effort.

She said she told them that the refugees regard education as "a very serious yardstick on which they will decide whether to go".

However, she said the Taliban would not give her assurances of a change in policy. Yet for many Afghans in Iran, only these kinds of assurances will persuade them that they have a future in their own country. And only then will significant numbers of Afghans return.

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