Eyewitness: 'Heat, dust and desolation'

Pakistan's border is straining under a human tide

		By Daniel Lak BBC News Online's correspondent on the Pakistan-Afghan border

As fears mount of US-led military reprisals in Afghanistan, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees is warning of a looming refugee crisis.

In the past, more than five million Afghans lived in exile from war in their country.

I travelled from the western Pakistani city of Quetta, up to the border town of Chaman in Baluchistan province, to see the unfolding refugee crisis for myself.

Atop the Khozak pass, the world's latest potential humanitarian disaster is spread out below you, a panorama of heat, dust and desolation.

The Afghan border and the road to the Taleban spiritual capital, Kandahar, both stretch into the hazy distance. The pass is in Pakistan, the destination of choice, say UN agencies, for a million or more Afghan refugees somewhere out there.

You strain your eyes to see them, but only whirling dust devils and the occasional village oasis break the parched monotony of the plain.

Nearby, Frontier Corps soldiers scan the horizon with binoculars. Two warplanes are roaring overhead, stepped up patrols for troubled times.

The Pakistani border of Chaman lies at the foot of the Khozak pass. "Chaman" means garden in Urdu - a name which seems a cruel joke in this drought-ridden landscape.

Smugglers' paradise

But border towns like this one grow opportunities, not trees: Chaman is a smuggler's paradise. In its filthy, single lane bazaar, televisions and stereo sets are stacked up for sale at illegal duty-free prices.

The drought-ridden landscape offers little respite

These days, even the smugglers are keeping their heads down, as nervous Pakistani officials close a usually-wide-open frontier for fear of a flood of Afghan refugees.

"We've seen this before," says the District Co-ordination Officer, Shafi Kakar, "Our country has sheltered the Afghans so many times in the past. Now it looks like we'll have to do it again."

Mr Kakar gives us permission to proceed almost to the actual border. We are stopped at an immigration barrier by local police and federal investigators.

Salvaging abandoned Russian armour is a lucrative trade

Technically, this frontier is shut tight - but only, it seems, to refugees, and even then, only to the poor.

While I watched, nearly 100 horse-drawn carts dragged across valuable scrap metal for Pakistan's steel industry. For decades now, the destruction of war in Afghanistan has fed neighbouring blast furnaces.

Mass exodus

Abdur Rehman Acchezai, a Pakistani taxi driver, told me that around 2,000 destitute Afghans, mostly women and children, were escaping the blazing sun in the shadow of old mud walls, just across the frontier and out of sight.

The Taleban enforce strict codes of dress for women

"They left Kandahar because the Taleban sent around conscription notices," he said, "The women are especially worried. If they lose their husbands in a new war, they have no hope at all."

They were invisible from where we stood. A group of young, bearded men walked by with the characteristic swagger of the guerrilla fighter. They were lushly bearded and sported white turbans.

Yes, they said, they were Taleban. Religious studies in Pakistan were over. It was time to head home.

Why? - "For the fighting," said one. "Death to America," said another, but his tone was mild, almost ironic. None had ever fought before. His colleagues laughed and they crossed the border, on their way to the unknown.

A few taxis, bizarrely with number plates from Karachi, 2,000 km away, drove by. One had nothing but women inside, all in the characteristic cover-all burqa made mandatory by the Taleban.

It was pointless to try to talk to them.

A few days ago, a Pakistani state television crew, innocently filming the border under orders from the government, was stoned by men who thought women were being filmed.

Taleban support

This is conservative, and largely pro-Taleban country. The movement of religious students that runs much of Afghanistan began here, and in the madrassas around Quetta.

As American-lead forces turn their wrathful attention towards the Taleban, as well as their guest, Osama Bin Laden, local support for the Afghan religious purists is growing. It's as much ethnicity as religion.

"We are all Pashtuns," explained shopkeeper Mujibullah Panizai, squatting between sacks of cement and fondling prayer beads.

Support for the Taleban - and Bin Laden - is strong in parts of Pakistan

"I don't wear the beard or the turban, but I stand shoulder to shoulder with my fellow tribesmen if an attack comes from outside."

"Don't underestimate us," he warns, then enjoins me to drink my tea and relax.

In the hills behind Chaman, alongside the rugged Khozak Pass, a few refugee camps are being prepared. There is no water, and no firewood, just a few mud huts.

If there is to be any military action by anti-terror forces around here, the challenge will be to match local hospitality to the needs of a new wave of refugees, while blunting fierce, traditional resistance to outsiders.

It is not going to be easy.