No shelter for freezing Afghan refugees

Children survive on a ladleful of porridge a day

By the BBC's Jim Muir at Maslakh refugee camp near Herat

There is mounting concern over a flood of desperate refugees pouring into western Afghanistan from the central highlands as winter starts to close in.

On a chilly plain just alongside the camp here, a small group of people walk across, carrying a small bundle.

Hacking away at the hard ground in the cemetery at the edge of the camp, they make a very small grave for a one-year-old child called Senobar, who died in the night.

She was sick, she had only been sick a short time, and she died in the open air in the freezing cold. She had no tent. She had no house. Her family had nothing, and no way to save her.

Sanobar died in the cold open air

Senobar's father, Rahman Otua, says the family came here from the highlands to the east, driven by hunger and desperation. Senobar fell ill three or four days ago.

But here there is nothing for them: no shelter, no food, no medical care. And so, he says, she was released.

Senobar is not the only victim of the night.

Nearby, another funeral is being held, among the mounds of stones which mark the desert graves.

Lal Bibi has lost one of her children too. Her four-year-old son Abdul Alim died the day before. She and her family came from Qaleh Noh, in the mountains north-east of here.

"He died of cold in the night," she says. "He wasn't sick. Here, we have nothing. We're just wandering around out in the open, dying of hunger and thirst and cold."

Anger

Abdul Rahman has been here two weeks. He is hungry, and angry. He says that what little food is being given does not reach the right people.

"The aid is brought here," he says. "It should be handed directly to the people. Because along the way, a lot of it just disappears and doesn't reach the people."

The least they can do is provide some kind of a hope

Abdul Rahman,
refugee

Has anything reached them at all?

"I've been here 15 days," he says. "I've seen nothing. The least they can do is provide some kind of a hope, at least we know something's on the way."

At least some of the children are being fed. Once a day, they get a ladleful of nutritious porridge from this soup kitchen. It is not much, but it helps to keep them alive.

And at the World Food Programme compound, the lucky ones who are registered and on a list are given sacks of wheat.

For those who have been here long enough, there is also a therapeutic feeding centre treating malnourished children like little Shirin. It is run by the aid agency Medecins Sans Frontieres.

Massive influx

Siobhan Isles of MSF, who is one of a handful of foreign aid workers in the camp, says that coping with the new arrivals, hundreds of them every day, is what poses the real challenge.

"There are many problems in this camp," she says. "Structurally, we have no idea of the numbers of people who are in Maslakh. The trend now is for a lot of people to come into this camp.

"In terms of the water and sanitation, the basic infrastructure is there. We're reasonably happy with that.

Lack of shelter is a major problem

"Really the main problem at the moment is these new arrivals coming in, who have no assistance. Shelter is of course a major problem."

Nobody knows how many refugees there are here. But it is thought to be the biggest refugee camp in the world - perhaps a quarter of a million people.

What is certain is that the number is growing by hundreds every day as more desperate people pour in, driven not by war, but by drought, famine, and cold.

The international relief effort has been slow to catch up with these new arrivals.

There will be many more funerals before it does.