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A People in need of a future

Soccer balls kick off refugee frenzy

Emma Poole
Calgary Herald
Mile 46 Refugee Camp, Afghanistan

A Afghanistan boy refugee walking around in the Mile 46 refugee camp, situated in the Margow Desert, S.W. part of the Nimruz province of Afghanistan, Monday.

The winding road through the Margow Desert to Mile 46 is long, desolate and dusty, with little to see but sand dunes, camel crossings and the occasional power pole.

So it's always an occasion when something good rolls along the barren highway and arrives among the rows and rows of white canvas tents now home to about 5,000 refugees trapped next to the Iran-Afghanistan border.

Monday, something good happened in the shape of soccer balls and baseball hats -- and it caused mayhem.

A frenzied crowd of refugees, for whom nothing good has happened in years, had to be driven back by whip-wielding Northern Alliance soldiers who have spent much of their recent time fighting against the Taliban.

The near riot broke out during a global goodwill mission when the British contingent of Samaritan's Purse tried to hand out the black-and-white soccer balls to the homeless and penniless people displaced by war here.

The soldiers stepped in with force and whips to fend off the refugees rushing the bus that contained the precious balls.

The whips were back in use later in the day when several people with the aid teams attempted to hand out baseball hats.

Northern Alliance soldiers at the Afghanistan and Iran border crossing in S.W. part of the Nimruz province of Afghanistan. In the far background the Mile 46 refugee camp can be seen.

Another fearsome pushing match ensued, but again the troops quickly dispersed the over-excited crowd by driving them back with their whips.

One of the soldiers administering the whippings was 17-year-old Anif Rigi.At his age, he should have spent more of the past two years playing soccer rather than fighting against the Taliban.

"The Taliban took our region and I had to become a soldier," he said. "My brother was killed by the Taliban."
Rigi claimed to have been in face-to-face gun battles with Taliban soldiers in recent months. He says he's shot "hundreds" of them, but is unsure if he's killed anyone.

He's now stationed at the Mile 46 camp where there isn't much laughter.

The tents the refugees call home are meant for six people, but each provides shelter for many more.

The people who now call the tent city home have nothing more than a few donated items from the Iranian Red Crescent (International federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies) to make it through the harsh Afghan winter.

Afghan refugee, Mohamad Khalili with his 1.5 year-old son, Ali Agah in their tent in the Mile 46 refugee camp.

Some have been in the camps for two months after being forced to walk for weeks to flee the onslaught of bombings by American-led forces.

On Monday, a brief glimmer of hope arrived in the form of two buses filled with westerners and two cargo trucks fully loaded with gifts and supplies.The convoy of Canadians and a group from the United Kingdom converged on the camp, looking to bring a moment of happiness into lives ripped apart by a war they don't understand and can't escape.

Many of the people who now call Mile 46 home are children who have no shoes to wear, little to eat and even less to look forward to.

The foreign aid group arrived here after much wrangling with government officials over visas and a three-hour journey from its home base in Zahedan, Iran.

As the two buses slowly approached the Afghanistan border in tandem, the road conditions changed dramatically. Pavement turned to gravel, and that then changed to sand.

The foreigners were forced to pass through three military checkstops patrolled by men carrying AK-47s. Some of the soldiers looked no older than 15 or 16.

Escorted by several members of the Iranian government, the buses were waved through with little fuss.

Gholam Sayfoor with wife Molki Sayfoor and daughter-in-law Golagha (far left, 13 year old) checking out the items received from the Samaritan's Purse hygiene kit that was delivered to needy Afghan refugee's in the Mile 46 refugee camp.

The border between Iran and Afghanistan is marked by a dirt wall several metres high. Along the wall are unmanned anti-aircraft weapons pointed toward Iran -- a sign of lingering hostility between the two nations.

For roughly 10 kilometres, the convoy continued down a dusty and seemingly endless road -- on one side, Iran, and on the other, several Northern Alliance military shelters built into the sand.

The arrival at the Afghan border came without warning. Two Russian-built blue pickup trucks with a rope tied between them mark the entrance to the country.

News of the team's arrival made the rounds in the camps as thousands of refugees lined a path from the entrance, hoping to get a glance of the much-needed supplies.

"I've been here for a month now," said Muhammad Rahim Khalili, who fled from his home in Mazar-e-Sharif when the bombings began in October.

"It was war that brought us here. My family died in the bombardment. We were (a family of) six and only I got out. I had two kids die under the bombings."

Truckloads of food, lanterns, blankets and shoes were delivered to the camp last month after Samaritan's Purse purchased $180,000 worth of supplies in Tehran. The organization is the first international relief group to bring aid into Afghanistan.

Zahra Khalili is 38 years old, but the lines on her face and the fear in her voice paint a much older picture.

"I've lost all of my belongings. I have nothing," said Khalili through interpreter and Calgary businessman Mansoor Deghati. "It's all because of that damn (Osama) bin Laden. Bin Laden has ruined our country and our lives."

Frequent dust storms whip around the camps, choking the Afghans, leaving the creases in their faces and their hair covered in a light layer of sand.

The camp reeks of human waste. Although temporary washroom facilities have been built, the refugees prefer to walk a short distance into the desert to relieve themselves. The smell is overwhelming.

Among the chaos and despair, the children are encouraged to play music and have fun.

"(The children) are like a desert that needs watered," said one Iranian who teaches at the camp. "They need to be happy right now."

This morning, the team will re-enter the camp to hand out thousands of shoeboxes to the kids as part of Operation Christmas Child, abandoning their previous plan to visit a second refugee camp -- previously controlled by Taliban fighters -- because of logistical concerns.

The Makaki refugee camp, just a few kilometres away from Mile 46, has swollen to more than 10,000 people and is only equipped to hold half of that.

Samaritan's Purse officials said it would take more than a day to distribute the boxes to the Makaki refugees. There is concern it would cause mass chaos to attempt a fair distribution of the gifts.

Samaritan's Purse, Operation Christmas Child personnel delivering hygiene articles to needy Afghan refugee's in the Mile 46 refugee camp.

Millions on the Move

* Some 1.1 million of Afghanistan's 26 million people are on the move inside the country. Those who use paths that criss-cross the inhospitable terrain risk detonating one of the millions of land mines that kill 80 to 100 people every week.

* Some 3.5 million Afghan refugees were living in Pakistan and Iran before Sept. 11. It's estimated another 80,000 have fled the country in the weeks after the terrorist attacks on the U.S.