Afghans Push to Be Admitted Into Pakistan

Thousands of Afghan refugees fleeing anticipated American airstrikes pushed up to the main border crossing into western Pakistan on Tuesday, adding to the chaotic conditions that have swept Afghanistan since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in the United States.

The U.S. has vowed retaliation against the prime suspect in the attacks, Saudi-born militant Osama bin Laden, as well as the Taliban government in Afghanistan that has sheltered him for the past five years.

A spokesman for the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, Rupert Colville, told reporters that between 10,000 and 20,000 Afghans had gathered at the Chaman border crossing about 60 miles northwest of here. He said about half of them were camped in the open, while others had sought shelter at a bazaar on the Afghan side.

Fearing a tidal wave of refugees, the Pakistani government sealed the Chaman crossing for three days last week, then reopened it only to those with visas or other travel documents.

Aid officials said emotions are running high among those trying to cross, mainly because they fear that the United States might first strike at the Taliban government’s spiritual capital, Kandahar, about 70 miles northwest of the border point. Fears of airstrikes escalated after Afghan religious leaders refused to surrender Bin Laden as demanded by the United States, instead issuing an equivocal call “encouraging” him to leave at a time of his choosing.

“It is probably the most tense border in the world at the moment,” Colville said at a news briefing here. “There are a lot of people out in the open, and the conditions are harsh. Days are extremely hot and the nights are very cold, and we’re not in a position to help.”

He said Pakistani authorities were allowing a few refugees who were in serious need of medical attention to cross, but even then, controls were stringent and stays were sometimes short. Two pregnant women were allowed over to give birth, then were sent back, Colville said.

In Islamabad, the capital of Pakistan, officials dealing with the country’s latest refugee crisis said that if the United States does strike Afghanistan, they would not block the ensuing exodus. Colville on Tuesday repeated estimates first made last week that as many as 1.5 million Afghans could try to flee to Pakistan if attacks occur.

They would join an estimated 3.6 million Afghan refugees already living outside their country, most of them either in Pakistan or Iran. Hundreds of thousands of other Afghans are said to be leaving urban areas such as the capital, Kabul, and the eastern city of Jalalabad. However, U.N. officials believe that many of these are not moving toward the borders but are seeking refuge with relatives in the Afghan countryside.

Against the backdrop of such a large-scale humanitarian crisis, officials from the U.N. and several privately funded aid organizations worked frantically to set up new camps and supplies in areas close to the border.

In the near-desert conditions of the border area around Chaman, the biggest concern is finding water to sustain the influx, according to aid officials.

As Tuesday’s events unfolded, the U.N. World Food Program bowed to international pressure and announced that it would resume shipments of grain to Afghanistan. The agency’s shipments are the sole source of food for an estimated 3 million people in the country, which is in the third year of its worst drought in memory.

The food agency suspended shipments shortly after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, citing a shortage of trucks and the evacuation from Afghanistan of foreign aid workers, which left no one to supervise the distribution. Privately funded aid groups called the suspension indefensible, claiming that failure to get adequate supplies into the country before winter could condemn as many as 1 million people to starvation.

The food agency said Monday that Taliban officials had broken into a U.N. compound in Kandahar and seized 14,000 tons of grain.

Contact between international aid organizations and their local Afghan staffs has virtually been severed, as the Taliban issued a decree stating that aid workers found using a satellite telephone would be executed. There are few international phone lines into the country.

“Local staffs are under increasing difficulty,” Colville said. “We’re losing contact with entire cities.”