Focus on Spin Boldak IDP camps

It was not the fear of US bombs but the dull pain of an empty stomach that brought the 65 year-old nomad woman, Wazira, to the displacement camp at Spin Boldak in Afghanistan's southern province of Kandahar, close to the Chaman border crossing with Pakistan. Waiting outside the dispensary, Wazira told IRIN: "We were hungry, poor and had lost all of our animals to the drought." Her family of 16 people, comprising her husband, two sons and their wives and children made the arduous 450-km journey from the Koghiani district of the eastern province of Ghazni three months back, partly by foot and then by hitch-hiking along the main highway. Wazira's story is no different from those of about 7,300 families, or some 65,000 internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Spin Boldak's five makeshift camps. The first is run by the World Assembly of Muslim Youth (WAMY). The other four are: Sheikh Abdul Rashid Al Makhdum, Islamic International Relief Organisation, Al Akhter and Al Rashid - all named after various Arab charities and individuals who are managing the camps, because the hardline Taliban rulers did not allow the UN and Western aid agencies to manage the crisis, keeping it away from the eyes of the world until their fall in mid-December. Most of the IDPs living in these camps are Pashtun nomads and farmers from the southern Afghan provinces of Kandahar, Zabol and Nimruz, who, along with most of their counterparts throughout the country, are victims of the severe central Asian drought - well into its fourth year now. There are also IDPs in the camps from western and northern Afghanistan - places as far away as Konduz in the north. "We have facilities only to treat a limited number of diseases," Miraj Din, the doctor at WAMY camp said. He added that respiratory diseases and diarrhoea were rising among the children. "We had two cholera cases in another camp recently. Pregnant women can get very little maternity services," he explained. Camp residents said that in some cases they had to shift pregnant women to hospitals as far as Quetta in Pakistan's southern Baluchistan Province, some 200 km from Spin Boldak. Education is a luxury that few can afford in the camps. Only one of the five camps has a primary school, where more than 350 boys and girls are crowded into the tents that function as classrooms. No wonder that the ages of the students vary from five to 14 in the two grades they are offered in the school. Abdul Hameed, a monitoring officer with the British charity Islamic Relief, told IRIN that since early November, when these camps emerged, they had been assisting the people with food items such as flour, sugar, tea, oil, lentils and dates. "At least we saved people from starving to death," he said. The World Food Programme (WFP) is now distributing most of the food donated to the camps. Most of the camps have water tanks, but the supply depends on tankers, which bring fresh water from a nearby tube well. "We have [only] one latrine available for [every] 10 families," said Din. Every family has a tent, but in some cases there is more than one tent in a compound, the others being made out of torn plastic and jute bags, housing close relatives. "We were unable to plant on our land because of the drought, and then the war started and we moved here," said Khan Mohammad, a young farmer whose village is just 10 km from the camp. He added that only skilled people like watchmakers, masons and electricians could get some work in the nearby Wesh market - the large contraband market full of second-hand electronics and cars brought from Dubai and sold mainly to Pakistani consumers across the border. "Most of the able-bodied men have nothing to do but rest," he said, as he showed IRIN his tent, where eight members of his family were living. One major concern of the displaced families is the approaching hot summer and sandstorms. "These tents will turn into ovens in a few weeks," one resident said and others nodded in agreement. Every afternoon the place was filled with dust as the wind blew. The difficulty facing the aid agencies is the likelihood that with the drought moving into its fourth year, most of the farmers and nomads will not return to their areas of origin. "We are not forcing anybody to return to their villages," Muhammad Godboudin, a field officer with the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), told IRIN. He explained that the agency would assist some 60,000 people in returning to their areas of origin out of a total of up to 250,000 displaced people in the southern provinces. "We will assist them in travelling to their areas of origin and provide them with income-generation and community reintegration programmes," he said. WFP will be supporting the return with food packages to sustain them for three months. Many IDPs expressed the wish to go home, but needed help with rebuilding their homes and planting their fields. Analysing the likelihood of IDPs deciding to go home, Hameed maintained that they would go if they could see concrete action. "Farmers need long-term help in restoring their livelihood cycle," he said. "Its going to be hard, but not impossible if the world wants to see us standing on our feet," the Afghan aid worker added. See the Spin Boldak Photo Gallery