July 14, 2002	Sunday	Jamadi-ul-Awwal 3, 1423

QARAH BAGH (Afghanistan): Hauling their meagre but precious possessions from Pakistan, including wooden poles stripped from mud huts to be used to erect new shelters, Afghan refugees are streaming home with high hopes but almost no way to make a living.

In the past four months, Afghanistan has seen more than 1.2 million refugees return from neighbouring countries — one of the largest and fastest voluntary migrations in history, according to officials at the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. Half a million more are expected to return by year’s end, and 400,000 internally displaced people could go back to their homes by then too.

At first the returns seemed an enormous victory — a reflection of the country’s newfound stability — but now it is looking like a disaster in the making, according to aid organizations and government officials.

Little was done to prepare for the influx, and the sheer number of returnees — almost triple the projections made by UN officials last January — is overwhelming the country, which has little to offer in the way of shelter, water systems and sanitation.

Nearly half the returnees have stayed in Kabul. Many feel they cannot go back to their rural villages because there is no work and the four-year drought has made farming impossible.

“Imagine the impact of 500,000 refugees pouring into a city like New York. It would come to a standstill, let alone a city in Afghanistan, one of the poorest and least developed places on earth,” said Yusuf Hassan, a spokesman for the UN refugee agency.

Donors promised the agency $271 million based on much lower estimates of refugee returns. Of that amount, there is still a $56 million shortfall.

International donors also have failed to meet their commitments to start rebuilding projects, as promised last winter at a Tokyo summit, government officials complain.

“This is a catastrophe, a humanitarian catastrophe. The guilt for this lies with the international community,” said Reconstruction Minister Amin Farhang.

Donors promised to invest about $1.8 billion in 2002, but so far the country has received only $300 million, Farhang said.

The United States, Japan and Germany have been the most forthcoming but still pledged more than they have delivered.

One reason is a lingering concern by aid organizations and foreign donors that there is still too little security in the country. Farhang points out, however, that instability is a local problem primarily affecting several north-central provinces and a handful of southern provinces — a far cry from the widespread turbulence that traumatized the country during most of the past 23 years of war.

If the international community fails to send money quickly, he fears, the combination of overcrowding, poor sanitation and lack of jobs will foment instability in the large urban centres, giving international donors further reason to delay projects.

Mohammed Ashraf’s story in many ways is a typical one, although he comes from one of the two most devastated areas of the country. In most parts of Afghanistan, 30 per cent to 50 per cent of the homes have been destroyed, but in two areas, Shomali, about an hour’s drive north of Kabul, and Bamian, in central Afghanistan, hardly a house was left intact, according to UN officials.

Ashraf, a farmer, lived in Qarah Bagh in the Shomali Plain. Three years ago, when the Taliban came to his village with guns, he and his family fled, leaving behind beautiful carpets and half a ton of mulberries, one of their prize crops. They moved to Karachi, and Ashraf found work digging tunnels for gas pipelines. He was able to save $120.

“If we are very careful, it will last us until the winter season,” he said.

Like most of the returning refugees, Ashraf’s family were poor when they left, and their lives hardly improved in Pakistan.

For Ashraf, the return kit provided by the UN refugee agency, which included 660 pounds of wheat, a tarpaulin, a pot and two blankets, was essential. The family — consisting of two brothers, their wives and nine children as well as the brothers’ mother — has already eaten the wheat, which was ground into flour for bread. Now they are living on a meagre diet of tea, bread made with flour bought with their savings, bean soup and mulberries gathered from trees in the area.

If they can possibly stay in their home, they will. But without a bare minimum of food and shelter, the bitter winds are likely to drive them south.

Still, Hassan, the UN refugee official, says Ashraf’s family is lucky compared to other refugees who are coming back now. Because of the agency’s funding shortfall, the organization has had to reduce wheat allocations from 330 to 220 pounds for a family of six. And instead of supplies such as blankets and soap, families now receive only plastic sheeting.

Other aid organizations are in similar straits.

CARE International, which was building water and sewer systems in Afghanistan as well as housing, had to sharply scale back its operation. It had reconstructed about 350 irrigation systems for the Shomali area, but too late to carry the little bit of water that came this spring in the midst of the drought.

And a goal of rebuilding 7,500 houses was reduced to 5,500, largely because of inflation.—Dawn/The LAT/WP News Service.