KABUL: In a vacant lot behind a car dealership, grimy children peek out from patched tents as squalid as any refugee camp. Flies swarm thickly around piles of garbage, men chop wood and women cook over makeshift fires.

A dozen well-dressed Afghans gather hopefully outside the office of an international aid agency, anxiously scrutinizing help-wanted notices for drivers, guards, field assistants and bilingual clerks.

The destitute and the educated alike are among tens of thousands of Afghans returning from exile in Pakistan over the past four months, hoping to find shelter and work here. What many have found instead is an overcrowded, dilapidated city where rents have soared beyond the means of all but the most affluent and menial jobs are snapped up by unemployed professionals.

These problems are the unintended byproduct of a largely positive phenomenon: the flood of aid, international attention and returning refugees that has transformed Kabul since the Taliban militia collapsed in November and was replaced by a UN-backed interim administration.

Almost overnight, the inundation of both money and people has dramatically skewed the city’s economy, benefiting a small minority of skilled or affluent residents but making it increasingly difficult for the majority of poor and newly returned Afghans to survive.

“We came back because we heard there was peace and security in Afghanistan, and that we would be welcomed,” said Malik Rahman, 45, whose family of 14 returned from Pakistan two weeks ago after a 20-year absence. “But there is no work and no place we can afford to live. The tents are too hot in the day and too cold at night. We have freedom now, but we cannot eat that.”

For educated returnees, the hunt for jobs and housing has proven equally daunting. Competition is fierce for menial jobs with foreign agencies for a single reason: They pay double what Afghan aid organizations can offer and five times more than government salaries. Most slots are filled immediately, often siphoning off the cream of Afghan aid workers.

Last week, six private foreign relief agencies based here complained that the United Nations, foreign governments and other international bodies were “undermining Afghanistan’s reconstruction efforts” by offering salaries far above the means of local charities or government. While most civil servants here earn 30 dollars a month plus food rations, they said, a UN driver earns hundreds of dollars a month.

Officials at the agencies, which include CARE, Mercy Corps International and Oxfam International, said they have lost dozens of skilled workers to foreign offices with deep pockets that have recently opened or expanded their operations here, including Western embassies, UN agencies and the World Bank.

UN officials here said the criticism is unfair: that their salary levels are standard in all underdeveloped countries, that funds are trickling down to the local economy, and that individuals have the right to seek the best possible job.

In interviews this week, a number of Afghan employees at the United Nations and other agencies said they could barely afford to feed their families on local salaries, and that many professionals were willing to forsake their careers for a chance to earn more money.

The push to earn more is in part a result of the spiralling prices that have accompanied the influx of foreign agencies. House rents in particular have skyrocketed; landlords who could barely get 100 dollars a month for a middle-class house during the isolated Taliban era now find they can easily demand 5,000 dollars.

In the past several months, thousands of low-paying Kabul tenants have suddenly been evicted, and hundreds of single-family homes are being refurbished and converted to guest houses, offices and residences for foreigners. Real estate firms, once virtually nonexistent, have sprung up citywide.

“These foreign benefits have also created a lot of problems. Every homeowner wants to make big money now, and they don’t care about the country,” said Bashir Ahmad, 30, a father of three who works for CARE. His family rents a house for 180 dollars a month, but last week the owner told them to leave. “Our own house was destroyed during the war,” he said, “and now we don’t even have a place to rent.”

The situation is far more desperate for longtime refugees who have just returned from Pakistan, often with little but a few bundles of belongings and 100 dollars from the UN refugee agency. Thousands have deluged municipal offices, hoping to obtain rights to build homes on small plots of urban land, only to be turned away. Rumours have circulated that officials are secretly doling out parcels to friends, but officials said they are simply overwhelmed by the demand.

Meanwhile, hundreds of families seek rudimentary shelter wherever they can find it: camping in vacant storefronts, shipping containers and vacant lots.—Dawn/The Washington Post News Service.