Afghans Reluctant to Leave Security of Freezing Camps

By Stuart Grudgings

Monday February 11 12:20 PM ET

BABAYADGAR CAMP, Afghanistan (Reuters) - Shivering in the driving snow of northern Afghanistan, Zaibar describes how the cold took the lives of two older members of her family and may soon take the youngest.

``My father and my mother-in-law died and we buried them there,'' she said, pointing to a patch of land that serves as the graveyard for the ragged township of tents.

``I only have a small amount of coal to keep warm. It's not enough. My two children are very sick now because of the cold.''

Along with an estimated 50,000 families, Zaibar is scraping out an existence on the desolate plains around Mazar-i-Sharif, the final refuge from two decades of war, three years of drought and a lifetime of poverty.

She is tired, hungry and desperate, but above all, cold.

``You have only been here for a few moments but you are already trembling from the cold,'' she tells a visitor.

Her biggest goal now is to win a place in Sakhe, another camp for displaced people about 12 miles away, which has luxuries such as a medical clinic and mud huts instead of the cloth tent she now calls home.

But if international aid agencies have their way, she will be going home to Kabul. The agencies say the camps are encouraging a culture of dependency by attracting many people from the city who simply want what they see as their share of free food and shelter.

``You do get a pull effect if you keep putting assistance into camps,'' said Ray Jordan, country director for Irish aid agency GOAL. ``We have to get to the rural communities.

``It's a very difficult balance between providing immediate aid to those who need it and thinking about the longer-term needs of the community.''

He said the $4.5 billion recently pledged by international donors needed to be focused more on rebuilding infrastructure and reviving rural communities than on the camps.

``BIG HEADACHE''

The International Rescue Committee, which is spearheading efforts to get people out of the camps and back to their homes, estimates that of the 50,000 families in the camps, 35,000 are not ``real'' internally displaced people.

``It's a big headache,'' said Ahmad Idrees Rachmani, deputy field director for the IRC.

``Our aim is just to give people the bare minimum on which to survive. Anything more than that and thousands more will be attracted and we don't have the resources to cope.''

But persuading people to go home in the middle of winter while this year's harvest is far from certain and with many questioning whether peace will last is not easy.

Zaibar, who came from Kabul six years ago looking for work, said she was angry with the aid agencies for not providing the camp with enough food or fuel.

``All they do is come here with their notepads and then leave,'' she said from behind her blue burka.

Conditions in Babayadgar indeed seem like a bare minimum. Families live four or five to one tiny tent, heated with a crude coal stove.

When it snows, as on Wednesday, the tents are soon soaked through. A freezing wind blows down from nearby mountains.

But at least there is some security. The north has been worst hit by the long drought and many of the genuine displaced people believe there is little to go back to. In remote areas, there are reports of people living on little more than grass.

``If I went back what would I eat?'' said Essak, a 30-year-old farmer, as he huddled in a queue for his monthly supply of coal at Sakhe camp to the east of Mazar-i-Sharif.

``The conditions here are not too bad and there is nothing to go back for. I've been waiting for the coal all morning but we're afraid to gather our own fuel because we hear people have been killed by land mines or wolves.''

``CAMP HILTON''

With its regular supply of food, heating and a medical clinic, Sakhe is regarded by aid workers as the Hilton of the 20 or so camps that dot the area around Afghanistan's third biggest city.

``I would like to go home,'' says Bahrudin, a 50-year-old farmer from Sari Pul province, one of the worst hit by drought. ''But I have no donkeys or oxen or seed. What kind of a farmer would that make me?''

The IRC's Rachmani says plans are afoot to move the displaced people around Mazar-i-Sharif into a single transit camp, in preparation for their return home, hopefully in a few months.

``We need to get people back to their communities, otherwise those communities will die,'' he said. ``We're already hearing that there are labor shortages in the provinces because so many people are in camps.''

But in their short time at the camp, the displaced people have put down roots, albeit ones they would rather not have.

``My family do not want to leave because my brother is buried here,'' said Siamoy, a 14-year-old girl wrapped in a dirty blanket at Sakhe.