Southern IDPs plead for winter assistance

Thousands of internally displaced people (IDPs) in a camp in Spin Boldak, 125 km south of the southern city of Kandahar, are in need of immediate assistance as cold weather and grinding poverty take their toll. According to people living in the camp, the situation in Spin Boldak deteriorated for the displaced group after the Afghan government and the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) stopped assistance to the destitute families. In August 2004 the camp was effectively closed and residents were told to return to their places of origin or settle as local residents. The IDPs are mainly from the central province of Ghazni and the southern province of Zabul. They are mostly nomadic people, known as Kochees, whose livelihood depends on livestock breeding. Most were displaced after losing their cattle and pastures following years of prolonged drought in southern Afghanistan. According to the Afghan Ministry of Refugees and Repatriation (MoRR), after another year of drought and crop failure, more than a third of the Afghan population remains dependent on food aid. Among them are at least 167,000 IDPs, most living in camps in the south and west of the country. Persistent drought, a lack of infrastructure and slow reconstruction work considerably slowed the pace of IDP returns in 2004. Return of IDPs was progressing well in the early post-Taliban period. Officials at MoRR said that the number of IDPs in Afghanistan fell sharply from 724,000 in December 2002 to 184,000 a year later. But in 2004, only 17,000 IDPs have been assisted to return, leaving at least 167,000 IDPs languishing in camps according to ministry figures. The remaining IDPs in Spin Boldak are unable or unwilling to return to where they used to live and are need long-term solutions to their difficulties. Hazrat Khan the IDPs' representative in Spin Boldak said they needed food and firewood to help them survive the cold winter. "Since the last four months we have not received any kind of assistance from UNHCR and from other aid agencies," Khan told IRIN. Naik Bakhta a widow and household head, pointed to the surrounding snow-capped mountains and told IRIN her three children would soon die of cold as she did not have a proper shelter. "I don't have wood in my house to warm my children and I don't have food to feed them with. My husband died and we are helpless. There is no one to help my children." According to Khan, UNHCR has also stopped providing drinking water. "Women fetch water from the local villages, nearly one hour far from the camp. There are no schools for our children since very beginning in the camp. Medecins Sans Frontieres [MSF] were helping us regarding health matters but as they have left Afghanistan, there is no other agency helping us," "Khan noted. Another IDP, Abdullah, a 45-year-old nomad said: "We have asked the government to locally reintegrate us or assist us in the camp, but there is still no response". According to the UN refugee agency, the IDPs were given a deadline after which they were told they were on their own. "We have promised the IDPs to help them with shelter but the government has stopped reintegration [into the local community] assistance," Ahmad Shah, an information officer with UNHCR's Kandahar office, told IRIN. Shah said UNHCR was waiting to see if the government wanted the IDPs to be settled locally. "If the government allows them to be locally integrated, then we will help them with shelter," he said. Officials at MoRR's provincial office in Kandahar said they had given the IDPs three options. Local integration, relocation to Zhare Dasht IDP camp, or return to their place of origin were the choices offered. "Some of them have departed to their places of origin, some were locally integrated in Spin Boldak and some have relocated to Zhare Dasht [IDP camp]," Mohammad Hassan Rahim, head of MoRR in the city, told IRIN. Rahimi confirmed that those who chose to remain would not be assisted as, officially, the camp no longer exists.