Kabul struggles to cope as 65,000 Pakistanis flee fighting

Afghanistan is struggling to cope with about 65,000 Pakistanis who streamed across the border to flee fighting between the military and Taleban fighters that has displaced almost half a million people.
About 11,000 families have arrived in the eastern provinces of Khost and Paktika this month as Pakistan’s military fights militants in North Waziristan province. Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif flew to a city in the tribal area Friday to visit some of the roughly 450,000 Pakistanis displaced in the country.
“This kind of migration had never happened previously,” Mohammad Nader Farhad, a spokesman for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, said by phone from Kabul. “It could be the biggest migration of Pakistani refugees in Afghan history.”
The flow of people into Afghanistan threatens to create a humanitarian crisis as Asia’s poorest country also fights Taleban militants in the south. A disputed presidential election risks leading to further violence and delays in signing a security pact that would keep US troops in Afghanistan beyond 2014 and secure billions of dollars in aid money.