BALKH (Afghanistan): At first, it was partly about revenge. These days it is about money and the power that comes with a gun.

In the days and weeks after the fall of the mainly Pakhtoon Taliban, Pakhtoons in northern Afghanistan fell victim to rape, robbery and pillage from armed men from other ethnic groups.

Tens of thousands of Pakhtoons fled, making their way west to Iran or south towards the Pakistani border.

Today, abuses against members of Afghanistan’s largest tribe are continuing in the north, UN and other aid workers say.

They may not be as violent or as widespread, but they are still on a significant scale, while extortion, kidnapping and robbery remain common in parts of the north.

In the northern town of Balkh, 300 Pakhtoon families are crammed together on a small patch of wasteland behind some houses. A tattered blanket or sheet thrown over a stick is all that protects them from the burning sun.

The tale of Anar Gul, who fled last November when armed men stole his jeep, two motorbikes, 200 sheep, a camel and all the wheat in his store, is typical.

“They said ‘Come back to the village’,” Gul, 28, recalls. “I went back and was building everything up from scratch again. Then the armed men returned and looted me again.”

Gul arrived back at the crowded and ill-provisioned camp just two weeks ago. He says he will not be returning home.

Pakhtoons in turbans and with black or grey beards line up to tell their stories, and show the petitions they have sent to President Hamid Karzai, himself a Pakhtoon, or to US envoy Zalmai Khalilzad.

“One day the armed men came, took some money and said we would be safe,” 29-year-old butcher Shaista Mir from Jowzjan province says.

“When night fell they came back, jumped over the walls, broke our windows and got whatever they could lay their hands on. They beat us up and left.”

“YOU’RE AL QAEDA”: Mir knew the ethnic Uzbek commander who robbed him — they had been chained together in jail during the Taliban era.

“I asked him if he remembered me. He said ‘Yes, but I need your money’,” Mir adds. “I complained to the commander who had promised to protect us. He said ‘You’re Al Qaeda’.”

When Mir first fled to Balkh, things were no safer. Another commander, this time a Tajik, imprisoned him for six weeks and demanded 100 million Afghanis ($1,250) in ransom. He is now deep in debt after his father raised the cash.

Groups like the one in Balkh are not hard to find in Afghanistan. What is striking is how little help many of these “internally displaced” seem to be getting from the government in Kabul or the outside world.

In Balkh, women cried and wailed as they showed half a piece of bread. It was all the food they had and hard as rock.

Elders said they had only received a few handfuls of rice from a Jordanian organization running a hospital nearby, and nothing from the United Nations.

Way to the south, another group of Pakhtoons are camped on a dusty and baking hot plain by the side of the road leading to Kandahar airport.

They arrived three weeks ago after a month-long journey from the north, sneaking away on foot at night.

“The governor came and was sympathetic, he felt pity for us and wept over our condition. But all we received was this blanket (for shelter),” said their chief Abdullah.

The UN refugee agency UNHCR seems overwhelmed by the needs in Afghanistan, especially with one and half million people also returning from abroad this year.

“We have over 800,000 displaced people in Afghanistan,” says spokeswoman Maki Shinohara. “In larger camp situations, it is easier to assist them. It is difficult to get to each individual settlement...to help everybody in need.”

ETHNIC RIVALRIES: Ethnic rivalries in northern Afghanistan were fuelled by the civil war, which followed the fall of the communist regime in 1992. Massacre by one side followed massacre by another as the northern town of Mazar-i-Sharif changed hands in 1997 and 1998.

Today mass graves ring the town.

But the story of Pakhtoon persecution is not only one of revenge for atrocities committed under Taliban rule. It is a tale of how the Pakhtoons, a relatively rich minority in the north, became vulnerable after being disarmed when the Taliban fell.

“If you disarm one community and don’t disarm the other this happens,” said one aid worker. “Pakhtoons are suffering because they don’t have guns and they don’t have support.”

Sayed Noorullah, a senior official in the Uzbek-led Junbish movement that controls Faryab province, says authorities are taking the problem seriously, and have appointed Pakhtoons Juma Khan Hamdad to control the mainly Uzbek Eighth Corps.

Junbish leader General Abdul Rashid Dostum called his commanders to a meeting recently to address the problem.

“There it was very clearly emphasised that all ethnic groups have the same rights before the law, their rights must be protected and anyone violating them will be punished,” Noorullah said.

Back in Balkh, Pakhtoons are wary, while aid workers in Mazar say authorities need to follow through on a promise to appoint a commission to coax people to return.

“Juma Khan has the responsibility but no authority,” says Mir’s father Mohammad. “He is powerless to help us.”

“I am safe here now,” adds Mir. “It is too dangerous to go back. They will kill me — I wouldn’t even last a second night.”—Reuters