ABSTRACT
Donors were more willing than ever to release funds for cross-border rehabilitation programmes. Covert and modest cross-border operations in the early 1980s were mostly done by a handful of small Non-governmental organization (NGOs). Only after 1986 did other organisations such as International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and United Nations Childrens Fund (UNICEF) become involved, yet neither were able to support significant programmes. A high level of participation in regional and sectoral coordination activities was perhaps in part due to the large, yet closely knit NGO community in Peshawar. As inter-ethnic fighting in Afghanistan intensified, NGOs found also that security concerns made close cooperation imperative. The Afghan crisis from 1979 onwards led to a forced migration of more than one-third of the population. Although figures are notoriously difficult to verify, it has been estimated that assistance to refugees in Pakistan, alone, cost the international community an average of US$300 million annually throughout the 1980s.
