Thousands of Afghan Families Suffering

by Rainer Lang

Note: UMCOR is working with ACT and CWS to respond to this emergency. See also: God, How Can We Comprehend?, a hymn to use in support of relief efforts for these refugees.

Lailema Khligi fled her home in Afghanistan a day after the US-led attacks on Afghanistan started. "I feared the chaos in the country which always comes when fighting starts," says the 29 year old women. She and her family lived in Kabul. "It was very difficult without work and enough food," Lailema says. Trained as engineer, she had not been allowed to work for the last five years, because of a strict ban by the Taliban that decreed that women could not work.

The family crossed the border through an old smuggler's path in the mountains. "It was like playing with your life," Lailema Khligi describes the way through the mountains. She came with her 5-month-old son and her husband to Peshawar where they are staying with family, who have taken in three other relatives as well over the last few days. Many of the refugees that trickle through the officially closed borders every day end up staying with relatives. Others go on to one of the existing camps near Peshawar.

Nobody knows for sure how many more people will make their way to Pakistan following the start of the bombing campaign against Afghanistan. Action by Churches Together (ACT) members Church World Service (CWS), Christian Aid (CA) and Norwegian Church Aid (NCA) are ready to help refugees in the possible new camps in Pakistan. They are already assisting those affected by the crisis in Afghanistan with shelter material and food aid. However, far more is needed to help the millions of people caught up in this crisis.

The ACT members in Pakistan have been working with their local partners in Afghanistan for years helping people affected by a crippling drought and a 20 year long civil war, as well as working with refugees in Pakistan. Hundreds of thousands of Afghan refugees live in and around Peshawar near the border to Afghanistan, in north-western Pakistan, in camps or in town.

Karim Mullah came to Peshawar fourteen years ago. He fled the civil war in his country after spending four years in prison. He says that as a Tajik from the Panshir valley, the Pashtun suspected him of being a supporter of the opposition fighters. The Pashtun in Kabul arrested him. "There are too many problems in Afghanistan," he says. "No work, no food and civil war."

The 54-year old man points out that it would be too dangerous for him to go back to Kabul. Karim Mullah is afraid of being detained again. As a Tajik, he is a member of the other main ethnic group in Afghanistan beside the Pashtun.

His condemnation of the terrorist attacks on the US is sharp. "This is not Islam." Now he worries whether his brother in Kabul is fine.

Karim, who works as a cook with an aid organization, boosts his income by selling carpets made by Afghan refugees. But the carpet making industry has collapsed since the terror attacks in the US on September 11, creating a whole new set of problems for this community in Peshawar. Thousands of families are suffering local partners of ACT member NCA in Peshawar point out. Many of the refugees who live in the residential areas in Peshawar had made their living on carpet weaving.

UMCOR 9/11 Update September 2004: UMCOR's response to the aftermath of September 11 continues. We thank are thankful for all of contributions that United Methodists and others have so generously given.

October 12, 2001