Refugee camp offers glimpse of growing crisis

Social justice news
November 2001

Major appeal planned for Afghanistan refugees
Amnesty International calls for U.S. restraint
Renewed Mideast violence called intolerable
Refugee camp offers glimpse of growing crisis
Bishops' meeting to look at Africa and aftermath of September 11
Earth Summit's declaration of interdependence

Refugee camp offers glimpse of growing crisis
The residents of the Jalozai refugee camp need no reminders of the coming winter. On a barren plain in northern Pakistan, its presence, and the fear it generates among the 60,000 people who crowd here, is almost tangible.

"What money we brought with us from Afghanistan is finished," one man explained. "Now, we are very worried about the winter."

The Jalozai camp, located about 45 miles from the Afghan border in Pakistan's Northwest Frontier Province, provides one of the few visible reminders of the enormity of the crisis unfolding in this region. With Pakistan's border still closed, the estimated 1.5 million people displaced within Afghanistan remain, as yet, largely unseen. The United Nations and many aid agencies working in the region are forced to admit that they know little about the numbers, condition or specific needs of those now reported to be crowding the Afghan border. But with winter approaching, the same organizations work frantically to establish refugee camps in northern Pakistan—100 campsites sufficient enough in size and capacity to shelter 10,000 people each—in the event that Pakistan opens its borders.

The process of establishing the camps, in itself a monumental task, is complicated by insecurity in the tribal areas in which the camps are located—areas where many local residents sympathize with the Taliban. Work in the new campsites has been slow as foreigners have been unable to access the camp areas for days at a time. And the entire undertaking is couched in the understanding that if the border remains closed, there will be no large-scale refugee influx. In that case, the massive pipelines of tents, plastic sheeting, cooking supplies, blankets and food being organized by aid agencies will have to be diverted to those in need inside of Afghanistan, a daunting task amidst ongoing bombing and increasing lawlessness in much of the country.

But the Jalozai camp, and others like it, represent an older chapter in the tragic history of Afghanistan. Built in the 1980s to take in refugees from Afghanistan's war with the Soviet Union, the camps have become in large part a permanent fixture on the landscape of Pakistan, which hosts an estimated two million refugees. Jalozai in particular—though provided with latrines and health and sanitation services by Catholic Relief Services, and with food and shelter materials by other humanitarian agencies—offers little more than dubious shelter for the newest round of refugees displaced by the air strikes. Unregistered and thus unaccounted for in food distributions, the refugees further tax the already strained food and water supplies in the camp—rations distributed based on numbers now months old. Amidst their tattered shelters, the refugees talk in chorus of their need for food and shelter.

"I have five children to support," one middle aged man said. "I brought two quilts from Afghanistan. Aside from that, I have nothing." Surrounded by dozens of other men, he recounted his trek from Afghanistan, where he paid almost all of his savings to a smuggler who guided he and his family across the border. "I paid 900 rupees (about 15 dollars) for my family to cross the border," he explained. "I have 105 rupees left. These are all the resources that I have."

It is a common story among the refugees here, and now, weeks into the ongoing conflict in Afghanistan, there is another theme emerging, the last hope for many here that they may escape the coming winter they now face as refugees in Pakistan. "If there is peace inside Afghanistan, regardless of who is in power, we will go back," one refugee explained, to the nods of those around him. "But first we need peace."

—David Snyder

David Snyder is a member of Catholic Relief Services' Emergency Response Team. He has been working in Pakistan since October 5, 2001.

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