Misery Abounds for Afghan Refugees

Aid groups have been trying to distribute food in cities, towns and villages to keep the needy from leaving their homes for Maslakh and other refugee camps, but about 1,000 people are arriving at the camp every day, Dan Gill of the International Organization for Migration said Tuesday.

The new arrivals come mostly from northwestern Badghis and Ghor provinces, where they say it is snowing and they have run out of food.

Aid agencies have been able to provide tents for some families at Maslakh, but many huddle under brown wool tribal tents or mud brick huts.

Toilets and clean water are as scarce as shelter in a region where sunny days are warm but temperatures are near freezing at night. Shamsoldin, 50, from drought-stricken northwestern Badghis province, said his 6-year-old and his 3-year-old have died "because of cold" in the last three days. The camp is surrounded by hundreds of graves.

"Just imagine what it was like there, that I quit my home to come to this," said Shamsoldin, who uses only one name. "Our farms have turned to desert. We had to kill our draft cows to eat them."

International aid agencies have warned of potential disaster in Afghanistan as it emerges from war and the deposed Taliban. Some areas have suffered years of drought. First war, and now snow, slow efforts to help the suffering. Some remote areas have received no aid at all, forcing residents to eat grass.

On Tuesday, Alejandro Chicheri, a spokesman for a U.N. World Food Program office in nearby Herat, said 325,000 people were registered at the camp, though he cautioned that some families had registered at more than one camp -- there are six in the area -- in hopes of receiving more aid.

Chicheri said the World Food Program was distributing 99 to 110 tons of food, mainly wheat, per day in the camp.

Alfred Ironside of UNICEF in New York said the camp's population has been in the 300,000 range since early autumn. But figures are hard to pin down. In Geneva, spokesman Jean-Philippe Chauzy of the International Organization for Migration said the current estimate of the population of Maslakh is 150,000-180,000.

At U.N. headquarters in New York, Abby Spring of the World Food Program said Maslakh was the agency's single largest food distribution point in Afghanistan and has been for two years. Recently, the camp has had severe problems with security because armed groups have entered camps looking for food, she said.

"The problem in Maslakh camp is not hunger; we provide enough food for them," Chicheri said. "The problem is the problem of all of Afghanistan, which is the postwar situation."

Newcomers often have to wait a week to 10 days for shelter. Shamsoldin and the 27 relatives he arrived with seven days ago still have no tents or huts.

The conditions hit children especially hard, and the number of children in the camp is high, said Dr. Vazir Seraj, a pediatrician with the Afghan aid group Ibn Sina.

Seraj said he has seen families with 40 children from multiple wives -- and one man who had three newborns in one week from different wives.

"This is an unbelievable problem, the number of children," Seraj said.

Respiratory diseases and colds are rampant, along with malnutrition and digestive tract diseases, he said.

Ibn Sina runs a clinic at Maslakh in conjunction with the U.S.-based International Medical Corps.

By early Tuesday, scores of patients already were lined up outside a mud-brick clinic. Ibn Sina's four doctors and six nurses treat about 200 people each day, clinic director Seraj said.