Afghanistan's hidden refugees

The onset of winter has meant deteriorating conditions

		By the BBC's Daniel Lak

As military attempts continue to dislodge the Taleban regime in Afghanistan, the extent of a devastating internal refugee crisis in the south of the country is becoming clear.

Western journalists have been taken for the first time to a refugee camp inside Afghanistan, where internally displaced people have been accumulating for months.

The Taleban have strictly prohibited contact between male journalists and female refugees in Sheikh Rashid camp, but a woman's hand, draped in a black scarf, beckoned to us from a screen of ragged cloth.

Dust driven by the desert wind swirls in the air and we walk over the meet Najiba, a 40-year-old widow.

Her defiance comes from desperation.

Standing up, she gestures at four young girls, two in their teens, two younger. "These are my daughters", she says.

"We haven't had food for days, a week for them, 10 days for me. Please help us find something to eat."

Her black scarf draped over her face for propriety, she tells me about her trip south from her home near Mazar-e-Sharif.

She says she fled the advancing forces of the Northern Alliance warlord general Abdul Rashid Dostam, when he took over the crucial northern city nearly two weeks ago.

"It is no good being Pashtun in the North," she says.

Chilling tales

A group of old men standing nearby nod in agreement. They use the word "atrocities" to explain why they fled from the north to the dusty desert border region near Kandahar.

We haven't had food for days... Please help us find something to eat

Najiba

Like Najiba, they are from the Pashtun tribe, Afghanistan's largest. But it is difficult to confirm their tales of human rights abuses and ethnic hatred.

These are just some of the chilling and tragic tales you hear in a few hours spent in the Sheikh Rashid camp, just across the Pakistani border into Taleban-controlled Kandahar province.

It is the largest of three camps in the immediate area of Spin Boldak town.

At the edge of the final bazaar, the camp stretches into the middle distance across an arid plain - row after row of canvas tents supplied by a Muslim charity from the United Arab Emirates.

Beyond them, are even drearier shelters made of stitched together canvas bags and bits of plastic where new arrivals like Najiba live.

Escaping the bombs

It is not as if life in the settled part of the camp is any better.

Thousands of Afghans fled their homes in fear of US bombing

Here, people tell us, they have run away from their homes largely out of fear of American bombing.

One man from Kandahar City said his children could not sleep at night, even if no bombs fell.

"And here in the camp" he said, "The planes still fly overhead. What are they trying to do to us?"

A group of boys play soccer outside an empty medical clinic. Even amid misery, there is time for football.

When they spotted us walking by, the players stopped and came over. One said to me "Why do you bomb us and then ask us how we feel"?

I explained that I was a journalist and not a military man. He apologised but still didn't seem convinced.

'No surrender'

As we were leaving the Sheikh Rashid camp, with so many pleas for help ringing in our ears, a pick-up truck bristling with heavily armed Taleban soldiers drove off in a cloud of dust.

The Taleban says it is firmly in control of the area around Spin Boldak

At the wheel was the local security chief of the Taleban and the de facto head of the camp.

He exuded the sort of confidence you would not expect to find among Taleban fighters who have retreated to this last remaining portion of Afghan territory under their control.

"We don't need any outside help," he said. "We don't need the United Nations or the Red Cross. We just need an end to the bombing and to be left alone."

He gave an emphatic no when I asked him if the Taleban were prepared to step aside or surrender if the fight to dislodge them made life even worse for the people of Sheikh Rashid camp.

Ominously, his answer indicates that the latest humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan is almost certain to get worse.