Predicted Outpouring Of Afghan Refugees Is More Like 'Trickle' Many Don't Feel Threat, or Lack Funds for Trip

By Rajiv Chandrasekaran Washington Post Foreign Service Thursday, November 1, 2001; Page A21

CHAMAN, Pakistan, Oct. 31 -- When the United States began its air campaign in Afghanistan, aid workers predicted that as many as 1.5 million people would seek refuge in Pakistan, many of them at the desolate border checkpoint here.

But 25 days into the U.S.-led attacks, a total of about 80,000 Afghans have entered Pakistan, according to U.N. and Pakistani officials, and numbers have been small in Iran and other bordering countries as well. "It's a trickle," said one aid worker in Pakistan. "It's not the flood we were expecting."

Interviews with refugees and aid workers suggest two major reasons. Many Afghans, already hardened by two decades of war, do not feel the bombing is heavy enough to warrant uprooting themselves. And those who do want to leave must take a risky and costly journey past menacing Taliban fighters and guards at borders that remain officially closed.

"It is a very difficult trip, and most Afghans cannot do it," said Nur Mohammed, who arrived here Tuesday after fleeing the Afghan capital, Kabul, with his wife and four children. Unknown numbers of refugees remain trapped just inside Afghanistan; Nur Mohammed passed through a camp there that U.N. officials estimate contains about 5,000 people.

Word of how hard it is to reach Pakistan has spread into the Afghan heartland by shortwave radio and word of mouth, refugee officials say. So when people do decide they have to move, they often go somewhere else in Afghanistan.

That is what Nur Mohammed did when the bombing of Kabul began. He and his family made their way to a small village north of the city. For a few weeks, he said, everything was quiet there, even though it was near the front line between the Taliban and the opposition Northern Alliance. "We saw the bombs falling on Kabul," he said. "But we thought we were safe."

Then, a little more than a week ago, U.S. warplanes began bombing Taliban frontline positions near the village. The following day, he decided to try to get to Pakistan.

Others in a U.N.-run refugee camp here said they had left because U.S. bombs had fallen close to their homes. But they also said that friends and relatives who have not been close to bombings have largely opted to stay, believing that the U.S.-led military campaign is targeted at the Taliban and not at civilians.

"Not everyone is afraid," said Zarin, a laborer from a village near Kandahar who, like many Afghans, uses only one name. "If bombs have not fallen on their village, they will not want to leave."

Mohammed Adar, a senior emergency coordinator for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, said it has become increasingly clear that the flow of Afghan refugees will not match those in Kosovo or Rwanda, when hundreds of thousands of people left within a few days. "There is no pattern of ethnic cleansing here that is pushing large numbers of people across borders," he said.

Refugee officials also had expected war-related disruptions in food assistance to the country, which has endured three years of drought, to drive more people out. But that has not happened on a large scale, officials reason, because despite the bombing, food has continued to reach some areas.

And, the officials said, people who have completely run out of food likely are too poor to pay for transportation to the border.

Getting there requires money that is beyond the reach of most people in Afghanistan, one of the poorest countries in the world. It costs as much as $10 to buy the right to cram into the back of a pickup truck for a four-hour trip from Kandahar to Chaman -- a sum that is beyond the reach of most Afghans.

Nur Mohammed was able to finance the journey by selling everything his family owned except their clothes. "Our carpets, the television, the radio, the cooking supplies, they are all gone," said Nur Mohammed, who has a thick black beard and wears a brightly colored prayer cap. He worked in a shop selling butter. "We don't have anything left," he said.

With many people trying to hawk their possessions to move, he said, prices have plummeted on the streets of Kabul. "Some people are very desperate," he said as he paced in front of a cream-colored tent that is his family's new home, waiting for a wheelbarrow to arrive with flatbread handouts for lunch.

Nur Mohammed raised 6 million Afghanis, about $150, by selling his family's possessions. The money was used to make the two-day, bone-jarring trip to the city of Kandahar and then on to Chaman.

But when they neared the Pakistani border, he said, Taliban soldiers detoured the family to a squalid, Taliban-run refugee camp in the town of Spin Boldak, where they were forced to spend the night outdoors. "They said we would have to stay there," he said. "They said we couldn't go to Pakistan."

U.N. refugee officials said today they have received reports that Taliban soldiers have prevented people from leaving the camp. The soldiers have brought military equipment to the area and are trying to conscript young men. "The situation is looking very bad," said Yusuf Hassan, a spokesman for the U.N. refugee agency in Quetta, Pakistan. "The mixture of soldiers and people desperate to leave is a potentially deadly situation."

Pakistan's government has endorsed the establishment of the Spin Boldak camp as a means of keeping people away from its officially closed border. Pakistani leaders argue that they already have given refuge to more than 2.2 million Afghans -- some of whom arrived more than 20 years ago -- and that the country cannot afford to absorb any more.

"If we open up the gates freely, we will have to be ready for another 2 million refugees," Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, said recently. "There will be social and economic problems. Do we want another 2 million refugees?"

Pakistani officials have expressed concern that the political uncertainty associated with a post-Taliban government would lead many of the new refugees to stay in Pakistan for years. And, officials here worry, if a new government is composed largely of anti-Taliban leaders, Taliban members and those sympathetic to the movement might seek to enter Pakistan as refugees.

U.N. officials have been trying to pressure Pakistan to change its position, but they have made little headway. Although Pakistani officials have said they will allow women, children, the elderly and sick people to enter, the policy is enforced arbitrarily. Pakistani officials also have quietly told the U.N. refugee agency to stop work on new camps, saying they will not be needed.

Today at the camp at Chaman, which is less than half full, local officials posted a sign saying the camp was at capacity and that people who had managed to cross the border should return to Spin Boldak, which contains about 5,000 people. "It's outrageous what they're doing," said Fatoumata Kaba, an official at the camp. "They're pushing people back."

Most refugees who do make it into Pakistan do not go to official camps out of fear that they could be deported. Instead, they have turned to traditional networks for assistance, joining friends and relatives who already live here, squeezing into their homes and sharing their meals.

U.N. officials insist that civilians should be allowed to flee a war zone. "It's appropriate for a government to try to contain a refugee exodus, but people should have the basic human right to seek asylum," said Peter Kessler, a spokesman for the U.N. refugee agency. "Pakistan should not be in the business of helping the Taliban to set up containment camps across the border."

But Afghans who have made it to the border said there are ways around the Taliban guards at Spin Boldak and the closed checkpoint at Chaman. All it requires is money to pay hefty bribes to border guards or to hire smugglers to lead the way along the back roads that traverse the 1,400-mile frontier.

Nur Mohammed said he and his family crossed this way, after sneaking out of the Spin Boldak camp when the guards were distracted.

A few tents over, Jan Mohammed, a truck driver from Kandahar who brought his family to the border on Monday, said he was forced to hire a smuggler when guards said he could not enter Pakistan with his wife and children. "It is not hard to make [it] inside if you have money," he said. "But that is not something many Afghans have."

-- Anonymous, November 01, 2001