Kabul turns back on refugees

BRINGING down his shovel with a dull thud, Wakhil Malik Muhammad broke ground on another home away from home.

Heavy fighting across southern Afghanistan over the past two years has forced thousands of families like his to flee country villages caught in the firing line between the British and US-led coalition forces and a resurgent Taleban.

At a time when the United States is re-evaluating its entire strategy in Afghanistan, a steady stream of Afghans from the Taleban-controlled south is flocking to a mud-baked refugee camp on the western edge of the capital.

"Every day we were living in fear, so we finally left," said Mr Muhammad, a native of Helmand province in southern Afghanistan, who first migrated to neighbouring Uruzgan province with his wife and two daughters before coming to Kabul a month ago. "It is better to die by choice than to wait for a bomb."

The Afghan ministry of refugees estimates that about 4,500 people now live within the tented warrens of the Kabul camp, a fraction of the estimated 15,000 that have been uprooted so far this year by violence in the south.

Camp residents familiar with the insecurity in Helmand, Kandahar and Uruzgan provinces say they are not planning to go back any time soon.

Tawos Khan, a representative for dozens of Helmand families, who lost eight of his neighbours in a bombardment last year, said: "We are happy to live here now, and will stay until there is peace in our (village]."

With the added worry of the oncoming winter, camp residents complain that assistance from the government and aid agencies has been slow to reach them.

Food and clean drinking water are said to be in short supply. Aside from some tarpaulins, hurricane lamps and children's clothes provided by the United Nations (UN) refugee agency, they have relied on the generosity of private donors and Kabulis living nearby to see them through. In the afternoons, a local man sometimes hands out loaves of bread and Iranian dates to refugees gathered ahead of the evening call to prayer.

Nader Farhad, a spokesman for the UN refugee agency in Kabul, said his organisation was screening people to distinguish legitimate refugees from those who had joined to receive free handouts. There are further concerns that if arriving families are given more than the bare essentials, a temporary camp could become a permanent one.

Mr Farhad said: "This is not a long-term solution for them. They need to go back to their places of origin soon for help to be sustainable."

Abdul Qadir Ahadi, the deputy Afghan minister of refugees and repatriation, said: "We don't have a special budget to help these people. It's a problem."

He said blankets, fuel and other provisions were being readied for distribution to help displaced people cope with the bitter winter months.

Mr Wali said: "If we go home the bombs will probably kill us. If we stay here the cold might do the same."

Robert Gates, the US defence secretary, has said Washington is considering changing its war strategy in Afghanistan in light of rising levels of violence, an increasingly complex insurgent threat and concern over civilian deaths from US air strikes.

He said: "We did that in Iraq. We made a change in strategy in Iraq and we are going to continue to look at the situation in Afghanistan."

Mr Gates, who recently visited Kabul, said a shortage of troops had forced the military to rely more on air strikes – a situation which he hoped to address by deploying more US troops to Afghanistan.

'Here there is no work for us, nothing'
SINCE the Taleban government was ousted in late 2001, Afghanistan has faced a massive inflow of returning refugees displaced by previous wars.

At the Kabul camp, seated inside a makeshift mosque, southern elders recounted how Taleban militants would use their villages as safe havens when under pressure from coalition forces, or launch attacks on convoys and foot patrols.

They also had to cope with the aftermath of the inevitable backlash, as coalition forces launched deadly reprisals.

Din Muhammad, a truck driver from the troubled Musa Qala district in Helmand, said he was out running errands several months ago when an artillery barrage levelled his home, killing his uncle and aunt-in-law. He arrived in camp a week ago with his two wives and four children after an exhausting three-day journey on a flatbed lorry. He said: "We lost everything."

Shah Wali, a long-time opium poppy farmer, said the Taleban controlled his village in the Sangin district of Helmand, the world's largest opium-producing region. Each month he was forced to give 20 per cent of his cultivation to militants as a tax.

Stroking his white beard, Mr Wali said: "They said, 'You must obey us'.

"They would kill us for being traitors if we ever tried to leave."

He was still able to earn as much as £4 a day to support his family, he added, until the sporadic violence became intolerable.

"Here there is no work for us, nothing," he added.

Last year, Iran deported more than 360,000 Afghans, causing a humanitarian emergency in parts of the West.

A further 100,000 followed between January and May of this year.

Pakistan had also planned to repatriate the 2.4 million Afghans living in camps on its side of the border by the end of next year, but now says it may review its deadline in light of the strains already placed on Afghanistan's cash-strapped government.