Afghans scrounge for food after fleeing war
By David Longstreath
JALOZAI REFUGEE CAMP, Pakistan (AP): Frustration, anger and despair mingle as thousands of Afghan refugees crowd around the gate of this forlorn camp near the northwestern Pakistani city of Peshawar.
Rumors that food will be distributed have drawn mobs of people, who have been waiting for hours in the desert heat hoping they will get some relief for their hunger.
Then Allahdad Durrani, the soft-spoken Pakistani civil servant who is the camp's director, faces the crowd with the bad news: No shipment today.
As he moves through the mass of sunburned faces, pleas ring out: "Help us, please! We are hungry!"
Moment's later Pakistani police swinging bamboo canes disperse the refugees. Dust swirls as men, women and children scramble to avoid being clubbed.
Many of these refugees have fled fighting in northern Afghanistan between the ruling Taliban religious militia and opposition forces. Many others have come to escape the third year of the worst drought in Afghanistan's history. Most have not eaten in days.
Pakistan has the largest refugee population in the world. As many as 2 million Afghans are thought to be living in 203 camps, mostly along the Afghanistan-Pakistan frontier. An unknown number of Afghans, rich and poor, are living in major cities such as Islamabad, Karachi and Lahore.
About 120,000 are at the Jalozai camp, which in reality is now a township of permanent mud huts, streets, markets and signposts.
There is little access to running water, or sanitation or health care, but the camp is bursting at its seams, and the flow of refugees has not stopped.
With no room in Jalozai, the new arrivals -- estimated at more than 80,000 since the beginning of the year -- have pitched tents in the adjacent desert. The tent city is now called New Jalozai.
In 1979, following the Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan, the Pakistani government welcomed fleeing Afghans. Not so today.
Pakistan has grown weary of the Afghan mass migrations and is trying to stem the flow.
The Torkham gate at the Pakistan-Afghanistan border was closed last November to all except those with official papers, and the government is limiting aid groups in their assistance efforts at camps like New Jalozai.
But the rugged mountain frontier is hard to guard. Durrani says as many as 100 refugees arrive daily.
Standing alone with her back to New Jalozai, Bakhtzari, a sad- eyed girl of 13, clings to a dirty sheet of plastic. She says her father is dead, and her mother is out searching for food. Two younger sisters huddle under a tent of rags that is their new home.
When asked what she is doing, Bakhtzari replies: "I am protecting the plastic. It is all we have."