Iran battles invisible crisis alone
Growing burden for Taliban's sworn enemy
Jonathan Steele in Makaki camp, western Afghanistan Tuesday November 6, 2001 The Guardian
The old man moves his elbows to his ribs and vibrates his bony hands in front of his chest. Then he opens them, palms up, as if pleading for an explanation. As our jeep moves guiltily off, this amateur mime-show of the shudder of exploding bombs and the quest for a reason why leave a more eloquent aftertaste than the message which virtually every other refugee describes in words.
In overcrowded courtyards in the Iranian frontier town of Zahedan, where hundreds of people sleep in the open, as well as in two tented camps over the border in Afghanistan, the theme is universal.
"If the bombing was used against terrorists, it's fine. But if it's against ordinary people and just forces us to flee, it's terrible," said Aziz Tajik, a radio repairman who escaped from Kabul with his wife and seven children 10 days ago.
His father and brother were killed when a missile struck the family home, he said. One of his daughters died of illness on the long trek by car and van to Iran.
While the eyes of the world and mountains of humanitarian aid are focused on Afghan refugees in Pakistan, an invisible crisis has been building in Iran.
Tens of thousands of desperate people have paid smugglers to get them over the mountains and across the border illegally since September 11. The less successful are penned inside Afghanistan.
In bizarre cooperation between sworn enemies, the Taliban have allowed the Iranian Red Crescent to set up tents on the bleak Afghan desert. In a sandstorm I watched Iranian officials deliver bread from a pick-up truck as armed Taliban guards looked on. Water is piped in from Iran and the electricity generator also comes from Iran.
A few men and boys wore motorbike goggles against the swirling sand, an eccentric piece of modernity beneath their turbans. Others wrapped scarves round their heads.
Anger with westerners was palpable and we were urged by our Iranian guides not to say we were British. Emma Nicholson, the Liberal Democrat deputy chairperson of the European Parliament's foreign affairs committee, who was taking a big risk in going into Taliban territory, was advised to pretend she was a doctor.
Iranian officials were clearly nervous and brought the trip to a hurried close when they sensed the crowd of refugees was about to get angry. A Taliban guard pushed the refugees back with a stick.
Inside the tents, where we spoke to families individually, the atmosphere was calmer. Gholam Nurzai from Kandahar said his house was destroyed by US bombs. "The same happened to our neighbours," he said. "My wife is ill and frightened all the time."
In another tent, Nadir Barakzai admitted he had been a Taliban member. He also said his house was in ruins. "We will stay here as long as we can. We have nowhere to go. We cannot go back. America doesn't let us. America is looking for Osama bin Laden. They should find him and not harm innocent people," he said.
Before the raids started, the Taliban were reported to be pressganging men into their army. But at Makaki slightly more than half the refugees are male, and most of those we saw were of fighting age. If the Taliban wanted to stop them going to camps, presumably they could.
So far, close to 7,000 Afghan refugees have reached Makaki. Iranian officials fear the exodus towards Iran is only the first wave of a vast movement which could accelerate as winter sets in and food supplies dry up in Afghanistan.
The government has beefed up its border patrols and blocked entry to any new refugees. Some 2m Afghans who left home during the Soviet occupation remain in Iran and the government says the extra burden would be excessive.
Thirty miles south of Makaki another camp has been set up in a small pocket of Afghanistan controlled by Baluchi tribesmen. They are loyal to the National Islamic Front of Afghanistan, an anti-Taliban mojahedin party which supports the return of the Afghan king.
Loosely linked to the Northern Alliance, the guerrillas control access to Afghanistan. What passes for a roadblock here is a piece of rope stretched between two oildrums. They lower the rope to let Iranian vehicles enter a small camp of 200 tents about a mile inside Afghanistan. Here, too, Iran provides electricity and a small clinic where refugees are screened for TB, cholera and malaria.
The stony, desert site is even bleaker than Makaki. Temperatures drop from 30C to 0C at night, with worse cold to come. The featureless place is known starkly as Mile 46.
For every refugee trapped at Makaki and Mile 46, there are at least five more who have made it secretly across the border to Iran. Those caught on the frontier are dumped in Mile 46. If they get to Zahedan or Zabol, where half a million Afghan refugees from Soviet times are living, they find a welcome with distant relatives or they rent space.
The Iranian authorities know where most are, thanks to medical teams who visit families and discover people not registered with the health clinics. They turn a blind eye and treat them anyway. But housing conditions are deplorable.
Aziz Tajik, his wife, and six children sleep outside, with a blanket stretched across a wire to afford privacy from another family across the yard. In two nearby rooms, each divided by more blankets, live four other families.
At least the women now go only partly veiled. Smiling briefly through the tale of their harrowing trip, Kaderman Tajik fished a full-length burka out of a bag. "We no longer have to wear this", she said. "And I don't need a beard," her clean-shaven husband said.
But the bombing remains unfathomable. "We left as soon as the bombing started. I don't know what's happened to our house," said Mesri Zaruzai from Herat. "Afghanistan has been destroyed but I've no idea what the bombing is for."
Medical records show 43,000 Afghans have arrived illegally since September 11. The provincial governor says the true figure could be 15,000 above that. Despite the obvious need the United Nations High Commission for Refugees gives no help to the flood of new Afghan rivals.
Chided by Lady Nicholson to be "more imaginative", Surendra Panday, head of the UNHCR office in Zahedan, said Its rules prevented cross-border work. As for the refugees in Iran, the UNHCR could not aid people outside camps.
Mr Panday hinted at a compromise whereby aid could be given on the border itself or within two kilometres on either side. "In the meantime UNHCR support is inadequate," Lady Nicholson said.
"This crisis is going to grow and we can only see what's on the surface at the moment," she said later. "The local governor told us there were nine provinces of Afghanistan from which people need refuge and Makaki is the camp which would have to receive them. There could be hundreds of thousands of people."
On the front north of Kabul anti-Taliban commanders are said to be enthusiastic about the bombing. Near the south-west corner of Afghanistan, with its flood of traumatised people, attitudes are different. At the end of Friday prayers at the main mosque in Zahedan after the start of the bombing a crowd of angry Afghan worshippers marched to the Pakistani consulate and although they are anti-Taliban smashed its windows with stones.
Three weeks later the mood is unchanged. A local commander from the guerrilla garrison near Mile 46 told the Guardian yesterday "The bombing is no good. It is hurting civilians, old men, women, and children. You see the people coming. They are all in shock and fear."