January 25, 2008	Friday	Muharram 15, 1429

KABUL: The “strange white stuff” falling from the sky was a revelation for Abdullah's children but it only meant more misery.

The 50 year-old Abdullah lost three members of his family during fighting four months ago between Taliban insurgents and foreign forces in the Sangin district of the southern Afghan province of Helmand.

That was it for him. He packed up and brought his surviving family members up to the capital, Kabul, in search of security and a better life.

Now he's camped out with scores of other people living in tents and makeshift shelters on a wind-swept field on the western outskirts of Kabul where temperatures at one stage this week plunged to minus 26 Celsius. Abdullah's children, brought up in the warmer south, were amazed the first time they saw snow falling from the sky.

“That was a new experience for them indeed,” Abdullah said as he huddled in a blanket outside his tent. But the “white stuff” heralded freezing temperatures.

“I have never seen cold weather like this in my life. It's pretty bad here,” said the gaunt, bearded man with piercing eyes.

Abdullah gets regular updates about the security situation back home in Sangin and while it is not good, he says he would never advise any of his old neighbours to follow him to Kabul.

“I tell them there is nothing for them here: no food, no firewood and not much aid”.

“We can't go back home because of the war but it is very difficult to stay here too,” he says.

The severe winter across mountainous Afghanistan this year has killed several hundred people and about 40,000 cattle, according to government estimates.

Conflict has driven millions of Afghans from their homeland beginning when Soviet troops first invaded in the late 1970s. Most of them ended up in neighbouring Pakistan and Iran.

With the help of the UN refugee agency, many have come back since US-led forces ousted the Taliban government in late 2001, but some have gone back.

And a surge in violence over the past couple of years, especially in the south, has forced a new wave of tens of thousands of people from their homes.

Most of them have moved to what they hope will be safer parts of Afghanistan and are thus classified as “internally displaced” people, not refugees.

As Abdullah spoke, several dozen people, most of them men, approached his tent thinking a reporter was from an aid agency and could bring them food or other supplies.

“Please put my name on your list too. We have nothing to eat or to warm ourselves,” said one them, 23 year-old Azizullah.

Azizullah said his father had recently died because of the cold and said many people had been falling sick.

Nearby the Helmand villagers' camp is another, set up by Afghans who were deported from Iran last year.

They rely largely on handouts from generous citizens and say help from the government and aid groups has been sporadic and scanty.

With jobs practically non-existent and prices higher every day, some of the displaced have been resorted to begging on the streets for money, food or firewood, which is essential for cooking and heating the tents.

A spokesman for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees said the organisation was aware of the plight of the displaced people from troubled Sangin.

“We know that 40 to 50 families have come there and our office plans to deliver them some winter assistance if there is a need,” said the spokesman, Mohammad Nader Farhad.—Reuters