Hungry await aid in Afghan opposition bastion

By Sayed Salahuddin

PANJSHER VALLEY, Afghanistan, Dec 10 (Reuters) - Soraya's home is a piece of plastic. One end is tied to the carcass of a gutted Russian tank, the other is nailed to the ground.

The 62-year-old Soraya has sought shelter at a disused military camp in the Panjsher valley after fleeing fighting between the ruling Taleban and the forces of opposition leader Ahmad Shah Masood.

``We became so awfully tired that we chose to use this (base) as our abode,'' Soraya told Reuters when journalists followed a U.N. aid convoy to victims of Afghanistan's civil war.

The eight-truck convoy carrying 90 tonnes of wheat and winter clothing for children left Kabul and reached the valley some 120 km (75 miles) north of the capital this week.

The aid was part of a planned 5,000 tonnes the United Nations hopes to send to the valley to help an estimated 65,000 people displaced by fighting between the Taleban, who have imposed their purist brand of Islam on the 90 percent of the country that they control, and Masood's forces.

SWOLLEN FEET

Soraya's feet swelled as she fled but did not prevent her or thousands of others reaching Masood's bastion in search of shelter during the harsh Afghan winter.

They are anxious for food. Some say they have not eaten properly since they fled the Shomali plains north of Kabul after the Taleban unleashed its summer offensive to drive Masood's fighters away from the capital.

``We have not had a full meal since we came here. The arrival of the convoy means that we will have enough to eat in the fasting month of Ramadan,'' said another displaced person, expecting a proper evening meal to break the daytime fast.

Not far away another woman used a cannon to support her makeshift shelter against the bitter winter winds which blow through the valley beneath the Hindukush mountains.

Women, some in tears, told of their flight and of the fate that befell their loved ones and their homes on the Shomali plains, which is a rich farming land now lying untended.

The Taleban said they chased fighters from the area and had to destroy houses and irrigation schemes to stop them being used in a Masood counter-offensive but deny using a ``scorched earth policy'' in pursuit of their last major opponent.

``NO ONE TO SUPPORT ME BUT GOD''

``I lost my husband and three sons in the fighting. I am left with no one to support me except God,'' said one woman, wiping away tears with her scarf.

``We had no option but to leave our house when the Taleban gave us the ultimatum to leave or be forced to do so,'' said Jamila, who used to teach in a school.

``It was as if Doomsday had arrived,'' said Jamila, hinting at killings and disappearances of civilians and the destruction of hundreds of homes in the worst fighting for years.

Around one-third of the houses once occupied by the displaced and their orchards and irrigation systems have been flattened in the fighting, aid workers said.

Now the elderly men stroll aimlessly down dusty tracks while young boys collect bushes for cooking and women blow on smouldering charcoal and twigs to cook what food their is.

And around the fires the talk is of one thing only, the trauma of displacement, the hardship of flight and the uncertain and chilly future.