“Indescribable suffering” among refugees in Jalozai

The situation for thousands of Afghan refugees in the makeshift refugee camp of Jalozai, near Peshawar in Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province, is now beyond critical, according to relief workers. UN officials have now made an urgent call for immediate international assistance to deal with what many are describing as one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world today. “There are no words to describe what you see there. It was one of the biggest shocks of my entire career,” UNHCR representative to Pakistan, Hasim Utkan, told IRIN on Tuesday. Utkan’s comments come in the wake of a UN fact-finding mission to the makeshift Jalozai refugee camp, 35 km southwest of Peshawar, on Monday. That mission found over 70,000 men, women and children huddled together clinging to life, waiting in desperation for any assistance the world might lend. One Pakistani newspaper described it as a “living graveyard”, a description Utkan said was not far from the truth. “That is a comparison I cannot deny,” he said. In reality, Jalozai is not a refugee camp at all, but a small sliver of land adjacent to a real cemetery. Thousands of newly displaced Afghans sit cold and hungry under plastic coverings and poles, desperately waiting for assistance, and some succumb and die. According to UNHCR, 18 children have died due to exposure since December alone. Particularly frustrating for humanitarian officials is that Jalozai was the scene, just two weeks ago, of a major UNHCR relocation operation in which 60,000 Afghan refugees were transferred to the better equipped Shamshatoo refugee camp, some 15 km away, where assistance was available. Since then, Jalozai has filled up again with even more newly arrived Afghans. Meanwhile, Shamshatoo is now full to capacity, making the task of delivering relief to the refugees more daunting than ever. Pakistan has received over 154,000 new Afghan refugees since September, making this influx the largest since the fall [to the Taliban Islamic Movement] of the Afghan capital, Kabul, in September 1996. “This is a problem beyond UNHCR... it’s not just refugees coming in, but people fleeing the drought as well. It requires the concerted effort of all UN agencies and humanitarian organisations,” Hassan told IRIN. The refugees’ needs are overwhelming UNHCR at the moment and, with open sewers and neither sanitation nor clean water, conditions are ripe for disease and a possible epidemic. Hassan said the refugee agency was calling for immediate assistance, including tents, blankets, medicine and food. “Given the number of people coming into Jalozai now and the current situation in Afghanistan, we only see this problem worsening,” he added.