October 19, 2001	Friday	Shaba'an 1, 1422

QUETTA, Oct 18: UN and foreign aid workers find themselves tip-toeing around unexploded landmines and rockets as they resumed their race to find water to support a mass influx of Afghan refugees.

UNHCR spokeswoman Fatoumata Kaba said on Thursday more than 150 unexploded Soviet era ordnance were found in dry wells at the Darra and Roghani refugee sites about 100 kilometres northwest of here.

“This is an additional problem we are going to have to deal with,” she said. “And Afghans have been arriving in greater numbers, and in a poorer health and nutritional state than in previous weeks.”

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and British charity OXFAM resumed repair work to water canals at the sites after a two week break enforced by violent Islamic protests in response to US air strikes.

Kaba said the landmines and rockets — remnants of the former Soviet Union’s 1979 to 1989 occupation of Afghanistan — had to be removed before work could continue.

However, the UNHCR was hoping to have the sites ready for occupation by the end of October, despite mounting pressure on foreign aid workers to complete initial preparations as the numbers of refugees builds.

At Chaman border crossing, between the Darra and Roghani camps, thousands of refugees crossed into Pakistan on Thursday, carrying their wounded from the southern Taliban stronghold of Kandahar along with their possessions.

A photographer witnessed about 300 families crossing without hindrance, on tractors, trucks and in cars.

Although the border remains officially closed, security guards have been exercising discretion on humanitarian grounds in allowing Afghans to cross.

However, Kaba said many guards posted at the border were demanding bribes and giving preferential treatment to Pashtuns over Afghanistan’s other ethnic groups — Tajiks, Turks, Uzbeks and Hazaras.

Earlier this week, the United Nations estimated about 2,000 Afghan refugees were crossing into Pakistan each day — most of them illegally.

It now estimates that the daily figure has more than doubled as US strikes continue in retaliation for the September 11 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington.

The UN has forecast a mass migration in response to those strikes which began on October 7. However, non-governmental organisations and the UN have struggled to find appropriate sites to establish refugee settlements.

The region around Chaman and Quetta is already overpopulated with refugees and is enduring a chronic water shortage due to the harshest drought in living memory.

Kaba said the current water supply was not sufficient to support the local population plus 50,000 refugees, and drilling of boreholes to help meet demand would begin next week.

“The refugees tell us that many more are on the way but many are held up trying to sell their possessions to pay for the trip which costs about 2,000 rupees,” she said.—AFP