Dateline ACT

Afghanistan 02/01

Caught between war, drought and closed borders

As crops wither away in the fields and well after well dries out, villagers have for more than a year been fleeing to camps near the larger cities or to Pakistan.

More than 120,000 people are settled at the Mashlak Camp for some the internally displaced. Nobody knows how many people have died here since drought-stricken families started arriving about a year ago. But the state of some of the malnourished children in one feeding center speak volumes about the situation.

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"It's a terrible mess," explained a grim faced aid worker who did not want his name published. "I can't give you exact statistics but when the mothers of 34 out of 1,300 children come here to report the death of their children within just a month, you really don't need statistics to tell you that something is really, really wrong."

This was back in July but already then the statistics were, by themselves, grim:

About half of Afghanistan's provinces are directly affected by the drought. The UN's World Food Program (WFP) estimate that about one fourth of Afghanistan’s 21 million people will need food assistance this year. Among the most needy are the nearly 1 million people who have been uprooted due to drought or to ongoing war within the country.

With all international aid workers out of Afghanistan as of this weekend, many of the aid projects will come to a halt and soon a very high numbers of Afghans could be fleeing toward displaced camps and toward Pakistan and Iran.

Weeks of travel through Afghanistan leave no doubt about what people will be fleeing from. Let alone their recent fears, the drought itself is a driving force.

Everywhere in the dramatic and sweeping landscape, yellow-brown nuances dominate: only occasional patches of green reveal where richer families have been able to pay for a deep well. In some of the most seriously affected areas, water levels have dropped some 20 meters. Across field after field wheat stalks withered away -- never even coming near to bearing grain.

In village and farm homes across several provinces the same sad story is being retold: "Last year our wells dried up so we dug deeper, much deeper until we found a little water," said one villager in Assadkhril in central Afghanistan.

Mashlak Camp is not far from Afghanistan's fierce Dashte-e-Mango - the Dessert of Death - and newly arrived camp inhabitants try to hide under black canvas or in shelters dug halfway into the black sandy, soil. In summer temperatures sore to over 40 C while in winter they dip well below the freezing point.

Despite the miserable conditions in Mashlak up to 10,000 families were arriving monthly already before the terror attacks in the US and the subsequent fear of military action against Afghanistan.

An Afghan relief worker who returned from a mission to Mazaar-e-Sharif, a city in northern Afghanistan, described the situation there as terrible.

"People are living in open fields with just a blanket or piece of plastic for shelter. Grown up men came to us crying for help. This is unheard in our culture and never happened during the liberation war against the Russians," the aid worker said, quietly shaking his head. "I even had to watch as an old man tried to sell his young daughter to a rich trader in order that he could food for the rest of his children."

If drought and war are two-thirds of the equation, the third is closed borders: Both Pakistan and Iran have since about a year closed their borders for Afghan refugees. And although the borders with Pakistan can be crossed for those fortunate enough to be able to pay the obligatory bribes to Pakistani border police, conditions in the new refugee camps in Pakistan are not much better than in camps such as Mashlak near Herat.

Even if the military action in Afghanistan does not escalate and the drought ends this winter, a new harvest will only be secured in about a year from now. But relief workers predict that, even in the best of scenarios, it will take several years for the affected population to regain their livelihood.

Text & Photos: Nils Carstensen (ACT International) &Chris Herlinger (CWS)

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