ISLAMABAD, Feb. 15-- When Qaisar Khan fled to Pakistan with his family from Afghanistan in the 1980s, he barely thought that even after four decades he could not be able to return to the place where he was born and spent the prime of his life. The then 63-year-old made the choice right after a fateful night when rattles of guns forced him to think that maybe he and his kids would not be able to see the rising sun of the next day. The blazing guns were not only intimidating but also stirred the feeling in him to escape. "The fear of death was looming on me. I did not want to leave my house, but I had to do it for my children's safety." Due to the unrest in Afghanistan, the 103-year-old, who never saw a foreign land before he stepped on Pakistan's land, never wished to return to his home country where his forefathers are buried. For him, his family's safety is priority. "I came with seven members of my family including my wife and kids, now we have more than 50 of us here, and if there is no peace in Afghanistan, more generations are to follow into Pakistan, in the refugee camp. How can we go back? To die of hunger or bullet," Khan told Xinhua in Khazana camp for Afghan refugees in Peshawar, the capital city of Pakistan's northwest Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. According to United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Pakistan hosts 210,465 household of 1,416,078 registered refugees, making the country one of the biggest host of refugees in the world. |