Global Policy Forum

By Pamela Constable

He had just arrived in Jalalabad for the burial of his elderly aunt, reaching the eastern Afghan city after nightfall Sunday, when the sky started to flash fire.

"We didn't understand. We thought it was a lightning storm," said Jarwan, 45, an Afghan refugee who lives in this Pakistani city near the Afghan border. Then came a series of booms, and the roar of planes high overhead, and the answering racket of antiaircraft guns from military posts outside Jalalabad.

Jarwan hid in his relatives' house all night, until the U.S. strikes had died down. When the family emerged for early morning prayers, all was quiet. And by 8 a.m., he said, Jalalabad was back to normal.

"The markets were all open, there were lots of cars, people were going about their usual business," recounted Jarwan, who, like many Afghans, uses only one name. "The airport had been hit, but not the city. No one was hurt or killed. It seemed like the missiles were attacking only targets that were far away."

With the Afghanistan-Pakistan border officially sealed and most telephone service cut off, it was difficult to find other witnesses to confirm Jarwan's account of the first attacks on Jalalabad, one of several major urban areas that have been hit for the past three nights.

The Bush administration is attempting to destroy terrorist training camps allegedly controlled by Osama bin Laden, the prime suspect in the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States. The airstrikes also are aimed at military and government installations of Afghanistan's ruling Taliban movement, which shelters bin Laden, but U.S. officials say they are avoiding civilian areas as much as possible.

Although damage to Jalalabad from Sunday's attack was minimal, Jarwan said that when he started for home Monday after his aunt's funeral, he encountered hundreds of frightened Afghans fleeing toward the border. Abandoning their cars before reaching the official checkpoints, he said, they trekked for hours through rugged hills, crossing the border on remote trails into semi-autonomous tribal areas of Pakistan.

"There were so many people that it was as if someone had drawn a solid line across the mountains," Jarwan said. "The new refugees had no luggage, only the clothes they were wearing. It was hot and the local people were selling water for money.

"I was just going home, but I know the refugees were frightened because otherwise the men would not allow their women to make that crossing."

Jarwan reached a road and found a ride back to Peshawar, where the father of seven has lived in an urban refugee settlement for 22 years and works as a day laborer. He said he had no idea what happened to the refugees, only that they had scattered and vanished into hilly tribal areas.

This still-invisible but growing human stream is the focus of frantic preparations being made by the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees here in northwestern Pakistan, where government and U.N. officials say they expect that hundreds of thousands of people could seek sanctuary as the U.S. attacks continue.

For the past week, U.N. crews have been hastily preparing five campsites in different tribal areas along the border, bulldozing the ground flat, digging wells and latrines, and trucking in thousands of tents. Within the next several weeks, U.N. officials in Peshawar said today, they hope to have shelter ready for 10,000 people at each of the five sites.

"It's a race against time, and the terrain is extremely inhospitable. This is literally a Death Valley," said Peter Kessler, a spokesman for the U.N. refugee office here. "There is not even enough water here for the existing population, their animals and their crops, let alone hundreds of thousands of newcomers."

The tribal areas of northwestern Pakistan, a chain of seven self-governing regions along the border, are inhabited by impoverished but fiercely independent peoples and are off-limits to foreigners. Kessler said many tribal people are angry at the U.S. attacks on Afghanistan and at the prospect of so many refugees entering their territory. Last week, tribal leaders temporarily forced U.N. crews to stop work at one campsite, and now all crews must be accompanied by armed police.

Kessler said the United Nations had wanted to set up camps in more convenient locations nearer to Peshawar and other population centers, but that the provincial government insisted the sites be confined to remote areas near the border.

Peshawar, 50 miles from the main border crossing, and surrounding North-West Frontier Province are already home to more than a million Afghan refugees. Many have lived here for years; others arrived last year, fleeing drought and fighting between the Taliban and Afghan opposition forces.

"The government has its concerns. They don't want troublemakers infiltrating the cities and they want to keep people close to the border, but this is making it extremely difficult for us," Kessler said.

He also expressed concern at a comment made this week by Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, that the government wants to allow only women, children and elderly refugees to enter the country. Because of protective Afghan customs, he said, "they won't want the women and children to come here alone."

Jarwan, like many other longtime Afghan refugees here, confessed ambivalence about the U.S. attacks. He said many Afghans do not support the Taliban and are not against the missile strikes in principle, but that they are adamantly opposed to any foreign troops entering their country.

"If the American troops come, every single Afghan will be ready to fight back," he said, sipping tea with a group of elders in his refugee settlement. The elders nodded in agreement. "We do not want infidels attacking a Muslim country. Afghanistan does not belong to the Taliban. It is our soil and we must defend it."

FAIR USE NOTICE: This page contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. Global Policy Forum distributes this material without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. We believe this constitutes a fair use of any such copyrighted material as provided for in 17 U.S.C íŸ 107. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond fair use, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.