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JALOZAI REFUGEE CAMP,
Pakistan (AP) – Clutching her shivering daughter beneath her
tattered burqa, Athar Bibi waited Tuesday for the United Nations
to move them from the squalor of Jalozai refugee camp.
Six-year-old Khalidja is the only one of Bibi’s three children
to have survived the bitter conditions in the camp, where grimy
plastic sheets strung over wooden poles provide the only
protection against freezing temperatures for some 18,000 Afghan
refugees who have streamed across the border in recent weeks. More
than a dozen refugees, mostly children, have died, among them
Bibi’s 5-year-old son and 2-year-old daughter. “They were
coughing and cold and weak. I couldn’t do anything. I tried, we
all tried but they died,” Bibi said in a voice barely audible
beneath the all-enveloping burqa that covered her from
head-to-toe.
As her mother spoke,
Khalidja peeked out from beneath the burqa, her brown hear matted
with dirt, her white plastic sandals turned mud brown like her
stockingless feet. “At night I just cry,” the little girl
whispered. “I sleep against my mother and try to get warm. I’m
always shaking because I am cold.”
Pakistani authorities and
relief agencies have been overwhelmed by the latest influx of
refugees to flee fighting in Afghanistan between the ruling
Taliban and supporters of ousted President Burhanuddin Rabbani.
Pakistan, a poor country of 140 million, closed its borders in
November, but hundreds of Afghans slip through daily. “This is
the beginning of a major crisis. The situation is getting worse
every day. Tens of thousands of Afghans are on the move and most
of them are heading toward Pakistan,” said Mohammed Dar,
emergency coordinator of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees
in northwestern Pakistan. On Tuesday, the UNHCR began moving the
refugees from the desperate conditions in Jalozai to nearby
Shamshatoo camp, where tents are being erected and the World Food
program is preparing to supply food.
But the need is enormous
and resources few, Dar said. “We have no money ... for all these
people. There is no money coming from the donors, either, because
they are not aware of the depth of the crisis or they are
indifferent,” he said. “Children are dying daily of things
that can be prevented. When I came here on Saturday, I was given a
dead child. This shouldn’t be happening. Antibiotics could save
these children.” Shah Lela, a refugee wrapped in a woolen
blanket, displayed a slip of paper – the death certificate for
his 4-month-old son, Sherazi. It said the child died of dysentery
and dehydration.
Dr. Khan Yulis Babri said
he treated 400 women and children on Monday in his stained yellow
tent. Most needed antibiotics and eventually the medicine ran out.
On Tuesday, dozens of women in burqas squatted on the frosty
ground waiting to see the doctor. “We have very little. Mostly
it is children we are treating. The worst off are the very young,
less than 16 months old,” Babri said.
Some 30,000 Afghan
refugees are already living in Shamshatoo camp since arriving in
Pakistan since early November. According to U.N. officials, a
total of 60,000 Afghans have converged on Pakistan since
September, fleeing the civil war, as well as extreme poverty and
food shortages caused by the worst drought in 30 years. The
devastating drought has wiped out as much as 85 percent of the
livestock in Afghanistan, ravaged
crops and launched millions on the move in search of food.
Inside Afghanistan, as many as 1 million Afghans face severe
malnutrition by the end of the bitter winter, according to the
World Food Program, which, along with the U.N. refugee agency, has
set up six camps in western Afghanistan for an estimated 100,000
people who have fled their homes. In Pakistan, where the United
Nations is providing only emergency relief, there already are 1.2
million Afghans living in refugee camps in the northwest and
southwest. Another 1 million Afghans are scattered in cities and
towns throughout Pakistan.
The first influx of
refugees began in 1979 with the invasion by the former Soviet
Union. At its peak, 5 million Afghans were living in Pakistan and
another 2 million in Iran. The protracted civil war that followed
the end of communist rule in Afghanistan has left Pakistan with
the world’ largest refugee population. “The issue for us is to
get to people on time,” said Dar. “The people who arrive here
are among the worst off. Thousands disappear once they cross the
border to live with family and friends. Those who are here have
absolutely nothing.” |
