Sorry homecoming awaits Afghan refugees

On a windy day, which is every day, the grand Industrial Village for Carpet Weaver Returnees disappears into a storm of stinging dust whipping across this barren plain in northern Afghanistan. It is a desolate place. Children are dying of heat and disease. There is no water, no power, no toilets, no solid shelter. And there is precious little weaving going on. "It's like hell," said 48-year-old Salima, crouching near her loom, wearing a blue burqa as the wind whips at the tent.

"We have nothing. We face a lot of problems here."

Three hundred ethnic Turkmen families -- about 1,500 people -- are camped under tarpaulins in the shadow of the Marmal mountains 20 miles from the major northern center of Mazar-i-Sharif, near the border with Uzbekistan.

After watching news of Afghanistan's progress following the ouster of the hardline Islamist Taliban in 2001, they came home from Pakistan three months ago.

But their village of Hairatan on the Amu River further north was destroyed by the annual floods in the years they were gone.

"Nobody is paying attention to us," complained 70-year-old Mahmud Amin, the white-bearded village headman and former mayor of Hairatan.

"We don't have any money. The government gave us this, but it doesn't have wells, it doesn't have anything," he said. "Since we have been here, we have done nothing. We can't weave carpets here. We have nothing here. Why should we not go back?"

At times, the winds across the plains are so fierce they knock young children over.

The villagers have dug "dust bunkers" -- holes in the ground covered with blue plastic sheeting for the women and children to hide in when the weather gets dangerous.

They say at least 12 children under the age of 5 have died of heat and disease since they came back from Pakistan.

More than 4.6 million refugees have come home since the fall of the Taliban, about two thirds from Pakistan and most of the rest from Iran, drawn by stories that life is getting better. But for many it is not.

Afghanistan is still pitifully poor, with no economy, no development and a jobless rate of 40 percent, according to the CIA World Factbook. This compares with the United Nations' estimate of 30 percent unemployment in nearby Iraq. After years establishing themselves and building lives in their adopted, if temporary homes, returnees find it hard to start again with almost nothing. In Pakistan, the Turkmen carpet weavers would buy their materials on advances from Pakistani carpet traders.

"The carpet shops here -- they don't trust us," said Amin. Barely half a dozen families can still afford to buy materials to keep working, making rough rugs already aged and discolored by sand and dirt on the loom before they are even finished.

A small rug takes about 25 days to weave, costs 600 Afghanis ($12) to make and sells in the Mazar bazaar for 1,200 Afghanis.

The families who can't afford to make carpets send their young men into the city to look for day jobs for $2 a day as laborers on construction sites or hauling goods. They spend half that getting into Mazar and back by bus or car.

The provincial government drew up an ambitious plan for a carpet weavers city, with solid homes, looms and a carpet bazaar, covering 500 acres. It would also include schools, water, power and clinics.

But all it has been able to do so far has been to sell tent plots at $120 a piece and erect an entrance "arch" of green cloth and timber poles, with one portrait of President Hamid Karzai and two of mujahideen resistance hero Ahmed Shah Masood.

"We have no resources," explained Khair Mohammad, deputy head of the local returnees and refugees department, during a visit.

"This is natural when people come back. They have many problems. It can't be done overnight. The government didn't make them come here.

"We're drawing the attention of foreign offices and NGOs to their plight. But we haven't been given any help yet," he said.

The returnees say they have been given plenty of promises, but nothing else. The sheets they use as tents bear the stamp of the United Nations refugee agency, but were bought at the market.

"They always promise 'tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow'. They always have an excuse," said Abdul Nazar Abdurahman, 20, one of the young men who makes the daily trek into Mazar looking for work, venting his general frustration.

After the baking heat of summer, the main worry now in the Industrial Village for Carpet Weaver Returnees is putting up proper homes -- at $4,000 each -- before winter hits in November, carpeting the plain with a yard or so of snow.

"Winter is coming. How can we make homes in winter?" asked Abdurahman. "The cold is coming. No one is coming to help us."

Bureau Report