As money and relief materials pour into Pakistan, aid workers are still struggling to find sites to shelter the huge influx of refugees expected to flee Afghanistan in the event of US attacks.
More than half of the $584 million appeal launched by the United Nations to avert a humanitarian catastrophe in Afghanistan has been earmarked for agencies handling the refugee situation.
But given the estimates that up to one million Afghans may try to cross into Pakistan, relief workers are desperately searching for suitable sites to locate them in the border provinces of Baluchistan and Northwest Frontier Province.
"Right now, we're up against a monumental challenge," said UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) spokesman Peter Kessler.
"The simple fact of the matter is that there is no water. If the country is hit with a massive influx of refugees, it would be a logistical nightmare providing water," Kessler told AFP.
"The money may be there, but we're not even sure if there are enough water tankers in the whole of Pakistan to deliver the necessary supply."
Baluchistan has suffered four years of consecutive drought, forcing up to 15,000 families to abandon their villages and take up a nomadic life in search of water.
The provincial capital of Quetta does not even have enough water for its own population and a recent government report went so far as to suggest the city would have to be abandoned by 2020 if the situation remained unchanged.
"There is virtually no rainfall and underground water supplies have dried up. We are already in crisis," said Mohammad Younis Khalid, spokesman for the Baluchistan NGO Federation, which represents some 300 domestic non-governmental organizations.
Nearly all the 100 refugee camp sites proposed by the Pakistani authorities are right on the border with Afghanistan, where the water shortages are the most acute and where water tables have dropped to up to 303 meters below the surface.
"Hygiene will be a major problem," Khalid said.
"Many of these refugees are illiterate and have no knowledge of basic water conservation techniques."
So far, only two sites -- abandoned refugee camps dating back to the era of the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan -- have been identified as suitable by aid agencies here.
Their total capacity would be little more than 20,000 -- roughly equivalent to the number of Afghans already believed to have gathered on their side of the closed border.
The reaction of Afghanistan's ruling Taliban regime to US threats of military reprisals over their refusal to hand over Saudi dissident Osama bin Laden has severely disrupted humanitarian work in the country, exacerbating the refugee situation.
Washington blames bin Laden, who has lived under the Taliban's wing in Afghanistan since 1996, for the September 11 suicide hijackings on New York and Washington that left more than 6,000 dead and missing -- QUETTA, Pakistan (AFP)
© 2001 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
