IDPs avoiding western camps for safety

The movement of internally displaced persons (IDPs) into displacement
camps in Herat, western Afghanistan, has completely stopped over the
last few days in light of potential military attacks by the US on targets
in Afghanistan in response to the 11 September terrorist attacks on New
York and Washington.

The US has linked Saudi militant Osama bin Laden, who has been given
sanctuary by the ruling Taliban Islamic Movement of Afghanistan, with
the suicide attacks in the US, which have claimed over 6,800 lives.

Washington has warned that the Taliban, which has refused to hand
over bin Laden in the absence of specific evidence of his involvement
in the US attacks, faces the same military threat as bin Laden in the
war against international terrorism.

Hundreds of people in Herat were leaving IDP camps and moving to the
countryside, which they considered safer from military threat, the
International Organisation for Migration (IOM) reported on Friday,
21 September.

The IOM, an independent organisation, works closely with the United
Nations on issues related to population migrations and displacement.

Those who could afford to do so were leaving Herat city for rural areas
or trying to reach the Iranian border, which remained closed, the UN
system reported in a humanitarian update on Friday, 21 September.

The situation in Herat and western Afghanistan, where there were
some 200,000 IDPs and 700,000 vulnerable people, remained
"generally calm" despite increasing criminality, insecurity and anxiety,
according to the UN update. Food prices had increased by over 20
percent in the past week, as global unease was reflected locally, it
added.

Herat was "one of the few areas in Afghanistan where IOM assistance
is continuing on a scale that corresponds to the needs of the
vulnerable population," the agency reported on Friday, adding that a
programme to build 6,000 mud-brick shelters in Maslakh camp - home
to more than 120,000 IDPs - was continuing.

That project employs several thousand camp residents, who will soon
use over 1.3 million mud bricks they have made to build structures
more resistant to wind, dust and winter cold than tents.

Essential drainage and sanitation work was continuing in Maslakh by
hundreds of drought and conflict affected IDPs, according to the IOM. In addition, the displaced were working on a series of access roads to limit random sprawl in the camp, organise residents into more uniform shelter blocks, and improve access points for food and other distributions, it said.

The organisation has suspended programme activities in the Afghan
capital, Kabul, and in Mazar-e Sharif in the north, but has started
shelter programmes in Baghi-Sherkat and Amir Abad, two informal
camps in Kunduz, northern Afghanistan, it added.