Afghan refugees scratch a life from camp hell

By RAYMOND WHITAKER

Nasir Ahmad looked stunned as he squatted in the dust yesterday at Jalozai refugee camp, with only a piece of sacking to keep off the 35-degree heat.

But perhaps it was just hunger - since he and his family fled Kabul for Pakistan three days earlier, they had eaten only once.

Nasir is only 19, but has been head of the family since his father, Maruf, was killed in a rocket attack six years ago.

The year after Maruf died, the Taleban swept into Kabul and drove out the warring mujahideen factions which had reduced the Afghan capital to a ruin.

"Life did not change much for us. We are ordinary people. If you shaved you could be put in prison for a week, but I was too young to have much of a beard," Nasir said wryly. Showing a hint of rebellion, he shaved his chin clean when they arrived in Pakistan.

Nasir and his family fled when they heard America would attack in retaliation for the September 11 terrorist attacks on targets in New York and Washington.

They spent all their savings to take a bus to the border at Torkham, with the driver bribing or talking his way through the Taleban checkpoints. But the border was closed - all they could do was sell everything they had, including their cooking utensils, to raise the 2500 Pakistani rupees ($96) needed to pay a guide to take them through the mountains.

The Jalozai refugee camp is so hellish Pakistani authorities would not let UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan see it. On a barren expanse which is dust in the dry season, flooded when it is wet, 59,000 Afghan refugees live under sacking, plastic, or tents if they are lucky.

It is also hostile territory. The local government says the refugees are illegal immigrants and will not allow them to put up permanent structures.

Mortality rates are high in the searing daytime heat and bitterly cold nights, particularly among babies and young children. But at least aid is beginning to trickle back into the war-devastated nation.

A 25-truck Unicef convoy left Peshawar on Saturday destined for the rebel-controlled Badakhstan province in northern Afghanistan.

The 200 tonnes of winter clothing, food supplements, medicine and blankets will be trucked to Chitral before being loaded on to 4000 donkeys for a four-day trek over a 4600m pass through the Hindu Kush mountains.

On the same day an airlift of 44 tonnes of plastic sheeting arrived in Quetta, Pakistan, from Denmark to help shelter the thousands pouring through the country's closed border. Most of the refugees are women and children, the men staying behind to watch property, livestock and crops.

The refugees do not share the Pashtun culture of the frontier province and southern Afghanistan, and are described by the local governor, Lieutenant-General Syed Iftikhar Hussain Shah, as saboteurs, spies, drug peddlers and arms traffickers - "dirty people", he once called them.

Despite everything, the Ahmads know they are lucky. A trickle of families have got through to Jalozai, but millions more are on the roads in Afghanistan, seeking escape from war and three years of drought.

For the moment Nasir and his family are safe, but they fear that if the Americans come to Afghanistan there will be more bloodshed.

"What do I want to say to America? Please don't come to Afghanistan."

Other Afghans arriving from the Taleban centre of Kandahar said the city was gripped by panic on September 11. Thousands left as quickly as they could, even leaving laundry drying outside their homes. One woman said her family left within an hour, their belongings crammed into a flour sack.

The appeal set up by the United Nations has received $US12 million ($29.5 million) in pledges. It wants $US268 million to tackle the refugee flood.

- Additional reporting by Alan Perrott.

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