The Children of Shamshatoo
By Hasan Ferdous

From a distance all I could see was a cloud of dust - thick, yellow and very dry - but beyond that lay a whole city, almost entirely made of mud. Dotting a vast arid area were several dozens of tiny mud houses, connected by a bumpy unpaved road.

It seemed almost pre-historic, carved out of a deserted landscape that could have been the perfect prop for a Steven Spielberg movie, except that it was no prop and it was not pre-historic. It was Shamshatoo, a campsite set up outside Peshawar - the capital of Pakistan’s rugged North West Frontier Province - for newly arrived Afghan refugees.

The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees has set up four separate camps, now collectively called Shamshatoo, that provide shelter and basic services to some 50,000 Afghan refugees. Most of the people who have found shelter here are newly arrived, some as early as a year ago, others as recently as a few weeks. Several of them have been shifted from the much larger Jallozai refugee camp, also on the outskirts of Peshawar. Overall, some 3.5 million Afghans have sought refuge - about 2 million of them in Pakistan and the remaining 1.5 million in Iran. Afghan refugees have also found shelter in several other countries neighbouring Afghanistan.

We visited Shamshatoo on 12 November 2001, our destination being the last of the four camps. Everyone here has a story to tell and a tragedy to share. Once the individual details are sorted out, they all sound the same. Running away from a brutal war and an oppressive regime, they are here to seek shelter, food and hope. And this hope, at least for those in Shamshatoo, has come in the form of an opportunity for both Afghan boys and girls to go to school.

Abdul Haq, the father of five (one boy and four girls), came to Pakistan about a year ago from war-ravaged Mazar-i-Sharif in northern Afghanistan. He first found shelter in Jallozai; only three weeks ago he was transferred to Shamshatoo. He was a taxi driver and his wife a school teacher. After the Taliban seized control of Mazar, girls were prevented from going to school. His wife lost her job and he lost an eye in a mine explosion. He would have persevered longer in his home town because he knew quite well how perilous a refugee’s life is.

But after several girls were abducted and the law and order situation broke down, he decided it was time to get out of harm’s way. “My biggest fear was for my girls. I had to take them somewhere where they would be safe, even if it meant running away from home”, Haq said. For him and for several hundred newly arrived Afghan refugees, home at Shamshatoo is limited to a tent that often has no plastic sheet to shield it from the bitter cold and no hard cover on the floor either. Water is scarce and a water van arrives twice daily to deliver “water rations”. You have to walk several blocks outside the camp to collect the weekly “food ration” provided by the United Nations. There is no doctor inside the camp. There is no electricity and when darkness falls over the valley, only stars are here to gaze at. It is pitch dark and you have to listen to your heartbeat to believe life is still flowing.

“But I can go to school”, quipped eleven-year-old Asma when asked if she missed home. Less than a week before, it was only a tent. Afghan children, desperate to cling to the tiniest bit of hope, would still come. They would leave their tattered sandals at the entrance, sit on the cold mat and listen attentively to every word of the “mualim” - the teacher. Now, a blue and white billboard stands outside a one-story building, still smelling of the fresh white paint, proudly proclaiming, “Baihaque Primary School for Girls”. “This is our new school”, says nine-year-old Mumtaz, acting as our local guide. Her eyes light up as we step inside a classroom.

Inside, about 30 girls aged eight to fifteen sit on a mat with textbooks, notebooks and pencils in hand. Two or three girls keep their veils on; others, wearing old but clean dresses, look straight into our eyes and welcome us with the traditional “salaam”. I felt there was an ocean between the squalor of the refugee tents we had just visited and this classroom. Most of the girls are reluctant to talk about the past. Too much bitterness, too much disappointment. They would rather talk about the future. The past has been so bleak that the future for them can only be better. All of them, without exception, seemed to be happy. For three hours at school, they can forget about the dirt, the hunger and the darkness at their tents and dream about a better tomorrow.

“I want to be a doctor when I grow up”, says a little girl, too bashful to repeat her name. Another, half an inch taller, says she wants to be a teacher. A third one, perhaps the oldest, says she wants to be a nurse.

It is not difficult to understand why most girls have their aim set on these three professions. Under the Taliban regime, girls were barred from going to school.

Tahira, who comes from the eastern city of Jalalabad, said it was the blackest day in her life when she learned she could no longer go to school. “I felt I was inferior even to animals. Dogs and cats can go out and run around free. I could go nowhere. I felt I was a burden to my family. If I could, I would open schools for girls everywhere in Afghanistan. I would teach girls everything I would learn”, she says, her eyes shinning with hope.

Of course, Afghanistan needs more teachers. It has one of the worst literacy rates in the world - only about 32 per cent of boys and 8 per cent of girls participate in some form of primary education. Under the Taliban regime, education was low on the priority list. Dropout rates soared, attendance declined and actual completion was rather insignificant.

Afghanistan also needs many doctors. It has one of the highest under-five mortality rates in the world - about 257 per 1,000 live births, or one of every four children. One fifth of all newborns suffer from low birth weight - less than 2.5 kilograms. One of every two Afghan children is malnourished and about half of all are stunted in height.

And those who survive must deal with another deadly menace, landmines. With over 732 million square metres contaminated by mines, Afghanistan is one of the most mine-affected countries in the world. An additional 100 million square metres are contaminated in the north of the country due to fighting along the frontlines. Before the beginning of the United States-led air strikes on Afghanistan, between 40 and 100 people were injured every week by landmines. In the recent air strikes, a large number of new explosive devices were used, some of which remain unexploded on the ground. Some children who walked into minefields to collect air-dropped food have either been injured or killed.

One of the girls in the class informs us her father was seriously injured by a landmine explosion. He was on his way to the market to buy bread when this happened. “I think we are very lucky. He just lost his left leg. He now has an artificial leg and can walk.”

“You call yourself lucky?” I ask, surprised. “Just imagine what would have happened if he was killed or perhaps blinded. What would have happened to us? We would still be sitting in Kunduz and suffering,” she replies.

There is another reason why most of the kids in the refugee camp feel lucky. They have some warm clothing. In Afghanistan, where winter is bitter, up to 1.4 million people are estimated to be internally displaced and many lack adequate shelter. In addition, there is the spectre of famine looming large.

There have been three consecutive droughts and failed harvests. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, the food Afghanistan was able to produce in 2001 was barely enough for half the year in aggregate. Unless the country receives massive food aid and this is distributed among the needy soon, over 100,000 Afghan children risk increased suffering, hunger and perhaps death.

At Shamshatoo, Afghan children may not be well fed, but they are not starving. Maybe that’s why they can begin dreaming about better days.

I tell the girls that the United Nations is working to bring peace in Afghanistan. If it succeeds, they all can go home. “Are you looking forward to returning home?” I ask.

An unusual silence descends. The girls look at each other, their eyes clouded with fear and suspicion. I repeat my question. Rafia, the oldest in the group, bites her nail, scratches her nose and takes a deep breath. Very slowly, as if counting every word, she says, “We are happy here. I don’t know if I can go to school in my village in Bamyan.” I could see behind the measured answer of the 15-year-old that there were charred memories, full of nightmares and deep wounds. Every single day of their young lives has been spent amidst war, one after another. Cities and villages have switched hands; new rulers have seized power. But Afghanistan’s nightmares have not ended. Now the children don’t want to believe anyone anymore.

Finally, it is time for us to part. We say goodbye once, twice, and the girls still stand at the school door, saying goodbye for the umpteenth time. Our jeep starts rolling, blowing dust all over the village of Shamshatoo. Three minutes later, as it swings past a local shop, two little boys wave from the roadside and say something aloud. “What are they saying?” I ask Ariana, our guide and interpreter.

“They are asking for pencils”, she explains. We dip into our pockets and bring out three rickety pencils. Soon, more kids gather, everyone with the same request.

“Pencils, do you have pencils?”

We had none left. I had never felt so helpless, so small before.



Links:
UNHCR: Crisis in Afghanistan

Hasan Ferdous, Information Officer at the UN Department of Public Information, spent two months in Pakistan working for the Office of the UN Coordinator for Afghanistan, and took the accompanying photographs.