Action by Churches Together (ACT)
Afghanistan 08/01
Thousands of families suffering
Rainer Lang, Peshawar
October 12, 2001


Lailema Khligi fled her home in Afghanistan a day after the US-led attacks
on Afghanistan started.  "I feared the chaos in the country which always
comes when fighting starts", says the 29 year old women. She and her
family lived in Kabul. "It was very difficult without work and enough
food", Lailema says. Trained as engineer, she had not been allowed to work
for the last five years, because of a strict ban by the Taliban that
decreed that women could not work.

The family crossed the border through an old smuggler's path in the
mountains. "It was like playing with your life", Lailema Khligi describes
the way through the mountains. She came with her 5-month-old son and her
husband to Peshawar where they are staying with family, who have taken in
three other relatives as well over the last few days. Many of the refugees
that trickle through the officially closed borders every day end up
staying with relatives. Others go on to one of the existing camps near
Peshawar.

Nobody knows for sure how many more people will make their way to Pakistan
following the start of the bombing campaign against Afghanistan. ACT
members Church World Service (CWS), Christian Aid (CA) and Norwegian
Church Aid (NCA) are ready to help refugees in the possible new camps in
Pakistan. They are already assisting those affected by the crisis in
Afghanistan with shelter material and food aid. However, far more is
needed to help the millions of people caught up in this crisis.

The ACT members in Pakistan have been working with their local partners in
Afghanistan for years helping people affected by a crippling drought and a
20 year long civil war, as well as working with refugees in Pakistan.
Hundreds of thousands of Afghan refugees live in and around Peshawar near
the border to Afghanistan, in north-western Pakistan, in camps or in town.


Karim Mullah came to Peshawar fourteen years ago. He fled the civil war in
his country after spending four years in prison. He says that as a Tajik
from the Panshir valley, the Pashtun suspected him of being a supporter of
the opposition fighters. The Pashtun in Kabul arrested him. "There are too
many problems in Afghanistan", he says. "No work, no food and civil war."

The 54-year old man points out that it would be too dangerous for him to
go back to Kabul. Karim Mullah is afraid of being detained again. As a
Tajik, he is a member of the other main ethnic group in Afghanistan beside
the Pashtun.

His condemnation of the terrorist attacks on the US is sharp. "This is not
Islam." Now he worries whether his brother in Kabul is fine.

Karim, who works as a cook with an aid organization, boosts his income by
selling carpets made by Afghan refugees. But the carpet making industry
has collapsed since the terror attacks in the US on September 11, creating
a whole new set of problems for this community in Peshawar. Thousands of
families are suffering local partners of ACT member NCA in Peshawar point
out. Many of the refugees who live in the residential areas in Peshawar
had made their living on carpet weaving.


For further information please contact:
ACT Communications Officer Callie Long (mobile/cell phone +41 79 358 3171)
or
ACT Press Officer Rainer Lang (mobile/cell phone + 41 79 681 1868).


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Action by Churches Together (ACT) is a worldwide alliance of churches and
their related agencies, meeting human need through co-ordinated emergency
response.  The ACT Coordinating Office is based with the World Council of
Churches (WCC) and the Lutheran World Federation (LWF) in Switzerland.
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