KABUL, AFGHANISTAN They are lost
children, scurrying through the rubble of a crumbling police barracks
in southwest Kabul. This is Camp Riaset-e-Panj, a newly established
refugee settlement where the wars of decades past still take their toll.
These sprites have never known another life. The girls wear ragged dresses
and colorful headscarves and hoist babies. The boys’ clothes are baggy,
their smiles wide. Every one of them is filthy soiled fingers, crusty
mouths and matted hair. And they are hungry.
About 2,000 refugees from 200 extended families, most of them children,
are squatting here in these ruined buildings. They are some of the 3.5
million refugees who have returned to the country since the fall of
the Taliban regime in 2001. Most of this group comes from Pakistan where
they have lived in refugee settlements for up to a decade.
The refugees are returning to a homeland that’s finding its feet after
23 years of violence. Buildings blasted by bombs and strafed by gunfire
stand like sentinels in Kabul. The country’s economy is tattered, a
generation is without education and the Taliban continues its reign
of terror kidnappings, murders, roadside and suicide bombings in
the Southern regions.
But the people are not without hope. Afghans from laborers to political
leaders say they are determined to nurse their democracy to maturity.
The country has suffered enough from violence. It’s time to rebuild.
In the meantime, Afghanistan’s children are especially at risk. The
childhood mortality rates are among the worst in the world. UNICEF estimates
that 210,000 Afghan children under age 5 die annually from malnutrition,
disease and the cold. That’s 575 dead children a day.
At Camp Riaset-e-Panj there is no running water, little food and no
protection from the cold. The government moved the refugees here this
Spring after too many children died of exposure in a tented camp. Today,
it’s a sunny November morning. Kites dot the sky and kids frolic amid
the dirt and stinking garbage. But already nighttime temperatures are
below freezing and it’s not even winter. More children will die this
season according to official expectations.
The barracks are treacherous. The twin buildings are four stories high
and as long as a football field. A decade ago, battling mujahideen militias
blasted and avulsed the outer walls during Afghanistan’s civil war.
Some children stay in cement rooms that are exposed, with only plastic
sheeting or a tarp to block the wind. In the past three months, four
children plunged from the precipices to their death.
Ghulam’s family of five lives in a ground-level room. Like many Afghans,
Ghulam goes by only one name. He is between 60 and 65 he doesn’t know
for sure and the rich auburn skin of his face, wrinkled by age and
suffering, contrasts with his long white beard.
Life is very hard for the refugees and everyone in the camp is worried
about the coming winter, Ghulam says. He shakes his head as he points
to a small wood stove, donated recently by an NGO to warm the abode.
The family can’t afford wood.
“It’s getting too cold,’’ Ghulam says. “Some days we don’t have enough
money to buy food.”
Many of the women in the camp are war widows. They may have no income.
But Ghulam’s story is typical for the men. When he can find work, he
goes to the bazaar to push a cart loaded with ghee, wheat flour or oil.
He earns 80 to 100 Afghans a day when he works about two dollars.
Ghulam can’t remember than last time his family ate meat.
Ghulam’s daughters Farishta, 10 and Hanifa, 15, sit on the cement floor
of their room, which is the size of a two-car garage and covered in
spots with worn mats. The brick and plaster walls are crumbling and
the outer wall is made of plastic sheeting stretched over a frail wooden
frame. Tarps with a faded UN insignia hang from the ceiling, dividing
the space in two.
Hanifa is beautiful but she has tired eyes. She does not smile. “It’s
a very hard life in here,” the young girl says, flies buzzing near her
head. When asked about her hopes for the future, Hanifa says simply
that she wants to have a good life.
One of the elders of the camp, a 50-something man named Halaam, says
the refugees are hopeful that some NGOs will bring some food and wood
for the winter. But even then, donated supplies probably won’t last
more than a month, he says.
Halaam, wearing long robes and a white pillbox hat, looks over the dirt
and rubble where the children run and skip. Today, visitors brought
light to the eyes of the little ones. They gleefully reached cupped
hands for small candies and then clasped the treasures tight to their
chests. The government has promised free land to repatriate the refugees
and maybe some day soon they will all have homes, Halaam says.
marshall.allen@earthlink.net