For Young Afghan Refugees, Home Only Dim Memory Now

His name, Janat Gur, means “Heaven’s Flower” in the Pushtu language of his native Afghanistan. Like many Afghans, he has a fair complexion and freckles and turquoise-green eyes. Place him in Hannibal, Mo., instead of this desolate, mud-walled refugee camp in the North-West Frontier province of Pakistan, and he is Tom Sawyer.

Heaven’s Flower is 10 years old. His fondest dream is of the day when he has grown big enough, like his brother before him, to pick up a Kalashnikov rifle and kill Russians.

The young Afghan and the several hundred thousand others like him in the 308 Afghan refugee camps in Pakistan are key factors in the refugees’ rejection of peace initiatives offered by the Soviet-backed regime in Kabul, the Afghan capital.

They represent a new generation in the refugee camps, similar to the volatile populations in the Palestinian refugee camps of the Middle East, for whom the idea of homeland is only a vague or theoretical notion.

Memory of Mulberries

Janat Gur says that all he can recall of his family farm near Kabul are the sweet grapes and mulberries there.

His new life is dominated by war and weaponry and hatred of a foreign enemy. Even the textbooks in his school preach a bellicose message.

“The books,” he said, “tell me about my country and how the Russians sometimes kill the child in the lap of the mother. With the older ones like me, they tie them to a cannon and blow them up.”

A week after Najib, the leader of the Afghan Marxist government, began a six-month unilateral cease-fire and asked the 3 million Afghan refugees living in Pakistan to come home, very few appear to have taken him up on the offer. Pakistani officials posted on the border report only a trickle of crossers, no more than the normal movement in this seasonally migratory and nomadic desert country.

Reasons for Refusal

There are several obvious reasons for the refugees’ refusal to go home, despite the Afghan government’s promise of a peaceful passage.

For one thing, after several years of bitter fighting in which several hundred thousand people have been killed, Afghanistan is no longer the country the refugees left after the Soviet invasion of 1979.

“All of the country is more or less destroyed,” said Abdul Haq, a leader of the Afghan rebels--the moujahedeen forces -- who commands guerrilla units that operate around Kabul. “There is no road left, no school left. There is nothing much left.”

Also, in the same seven-year period, the refugee camps that began as squalid tent settlements along the Afghan-Pakistani border, have evolved into semi-permanent, adobe brick villages. They have their own governments and markets, even some light industries such as flour mills. With the help of massive aid projects from sympathetic governments, including more than $800 million from the United States, the refugees are provided health care and more food than many were able to acquire in Afghanistan before the war.

Every month, each of the registered 2.7 million refugees is allotted 33 pounds of wheat, two pounds of edible oil, one pound of sugar, two pounds of dried skim milk and several ounces of tea. However, officials report that as many as 400,000 refugees living in Pakistan are still not registered and therefore not eligible for these supplies.

The distribution of such enormous quantities of food to the world’s largest refugee population is one of the biggest success stories of the seven-year war.

Thursday was distribution day at the Munda Camp, Pakistan’s largest with more than 65,000 refugees living in the foothills of the Sulaiman Mountains 25 miles north of Peshawar. Hundreds of refugee families, many with donkeys to carry their supplies, lined up outside the distribution center. Huge bags of wheat were stacked on the ground and cut open to fill the bags of refugees.

One of the recipients, Sayed Miran, 34, said he had come to Pakistan in 1984 after he could no longer make a living in his homeland because of the war. He said he will not go back to Afghanistan again until he is sure that all the Russians have left.

‘I Think It’s a Lie’

“I heard the announcement about the cease-fire, but I think it is a lie,” he said. “If I really come to know that the Russians are no more there, only then will I consider going back.”

For the time being, he went on, his life in the refugee camp is good enough for his family.

A Pakistani official observing the distribution said: “These people are poor people. Most come from farms. In Afghanistan, their life is very hard, was very hard, even before the war. Here they just come with their donkeys and pick up food without even working for it. I am sure that many are happier here than they were back home.”

Because of the extraordinary aid program, the picture in the refugee camps is one of a people who are in no way desperate to return home. Although the Marxist Afghan government went so far as to install loudspeakers at some key border crossings to welcome refugees back home and promised them safety, observers in the border areas say that only a handful have crossed, no more than the usual number for the winter season.

Ikramullah Jan, director of the Pakistani government press information office in Peshawar, said he had received unofficial reports that no more than 30,000 Afghan refugees had responded to the call from home. Other officials said even that number may be high.

Intervention Charged

However, a Soviet diplomat in Islamabad said in an interview this week that there was an initial “two- or three-day rush” of Afghan refugees to return. The refugee flow stopped, he said, because of intervention by the Pakistani government.

“We know that some Pakistan authorities put some obstacles in the way,” the Soviet diplomat said. “The authorities held top-level meetings in Peshawar, and security around the refugee camps increased. Checkpoints were added.”

The diplomat, a senior official who asked not to be identified by name, said the morale of the Afghans had been drained by the seven-year war and that most are ready to go home.

“They are tired,” he said. “They are tired of the civil war, or whatever you call it. They want peace.”

If anything, however, the morale of the Afghan refugees in the Peshawar area appeared to be higher than before the peace initiative. The seven main Afghan moujahedeen groups based in Peshawar appear to be more unified than at any previous time. A rally called last Saturday by the seven-group alliance, the Islamic Unity of Afghan Moujahedeen, drew more than 150,000 Afghans into Peshawar. At the rally, rebel leaders announced, to the cheers of the assembled refugees, a total rejection of the cease-fire.

‘Ignominious Surrender’

“Acceptance of a cease-fire after all these sacrifices and suffering will be tantamount to a shameful accommodation and ignominious surrender to the enemy,” the leaders of the alliance said in a joint statement.

The statement was in itself an achievement for the rival, often-feuding rebel groups.

Like most of the Afghan refugee camps, the large camp at Munda is a haven for moujahedeen fighters. The men often spend several months fighting in Afghanistan and then return for several months to the camp.

The spirit of the fighters in the camp this week appeared to be high. They laughed when a reporter asked them if they had considered returning to Afghanistan under the offer of amnesty and protection.

“Even if they pushed us into Afghanistan, we would not like to go,” said Mohammed Gul, 31, a rebel who said he had been inside Afghanistan on fighting missions eight times.

Another man, Mohammed Nazir, 41, said he had already been in battle since the cease-fire began Jan. 15. He said he was part of a 300-man moujahedeen unit that attacked a Soviet installation near Jalalabad in eastern Afghanistan on Jan. 16, the day after the cease-fire went into effect.

Severe Counterattack

“We attacked them, but their counterattack was severe,” he said. “They dropped many bombs.”

He said the rebels paid little attention to the cease-fire, and added, “We just laughed and reminded ourselves to be more alert.”

Qazi Abdul Ghafoor, 60, who said he used to be a judge in Afghanistan, said he had written a poem about the rebels’ cause. He said he often accompanies younger rebels into Afghanistan, not to fight but to read poetry to them and encourage them in battle.

“My nickname,” he said, “is ‘Marham’--’Ointment.’ I am an ointment for healing wounds.”

His latest poem, entitled “Jihad,” or “Holy War,” is intended to remind the rebels that they defeated British soldiers on three occasions more than 100 years ago, he said, and recited:

I am the servant of Allah and the follower of Mohammed; My name is Afghan. I love freedom, and I have lived in this world as a courageous and chivalrous man.

No one has ever defeated me in a battlefield. I am ambushing the enemy like a powerful lion.