Tolerance wanes as perceptions of Afghan refugees change

Counting out a wad of crumpled notes, 50-year-old Muhammad Zahoor, owner of a small iron-welding business in Peshawar, is full of complaints. "It is so difficult to get the rent from my tenants each month. Also they are noisy, and have brought four other relatives to live here. I just wish they would leave," he said according to a report by IRIN, the UN information unit. To supplement his income, Zahoor rents the three rooms that form the lower portion of his flat to an Afghan refugee family who, he says, "refuse to leave". "It is no longer easy to find people willing to rent rooms to us. We are sometimes late with rent only because it is hard for my sons to find work," his tenant Abdullah Khan, 80, who came to Pakistan with the first wave of refugees in 1980, told IRIN. "Perhaps we have outstayed our welcome,"