War comes of age in Pakistan: recent refugees join a forgotten generation of Afghans struggling to survive in border camps.

Fourteen-year-old Hameed Khan uses his hands to pull himself through the dirt, his polio-destroyed legs dragging behind him. His affliction earns him sympathy, but only about 100 or so rupees (less than $2) for an eight- to 10-hour day of begging on the streets of Peshawar in Pakistan.

Jahal Akbar, 10, also puts in a 10-hour day, scrounging through the city's garbage dumps for plastic, aluminum, and other recyclable materials he can resell. For his efforts, he brings home a mere 15 or 20 rupees a day to his family.

Twelve-year-old Jumma Gul works six days a week as a tea boy in a small market in Peshawar to help support his family of six brothers and three sisters--all refugees from Jalalabad.

These children are the forgotten generation of Afghanistan. Many were born in refugee camps in Pakistan, where their parents fled to escape war, drought, and famine in their own court try. For the most part, the refugees have been left to their own devices to survive with little assistance from governments and only sporadic help from relief organizations. Many of the children know no other life than this precarious existence.

The rest of the world gave them little thought--until September 11.

The U.S. bombing in Afghanistan has exacerbated the flow of refugees from that country, but it has also focused attention on the plight of the millions of Afghan people who had already been forced to flee their homes over the past two decades. Exact numbers are hard to come by, but most estimates say some 5 million refugees have left Afghanistan since the Soviet invasion in 1979, 1.8 million of them children. Another 1.5 million are estimated to have died in the 20 years of war, almost one third of them children.

Those who left didn't go far, their transportation options limited to their own feet. Families, including young children and aging grandparents, gathered their meager belongings and walked over steep mountain passes to neighboring Iran or Pakistan. Those who stayed and were lucky enough to survive the civil war eventually fell victim to the drought that began three years ago, resulting in another barrage of displaced people heading for the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. Many of those more recent refugees ended up in either the makeshift Jalozai camp or the more established Shamshatoo camp, both about 45 miles from the Afghanistan border.

Since the American air strikes began in early October, these already overcrowded camps have been overwhelmed with thousands more refugees. Shamshatoo was already home to 50,000 to 70,000 people, and more than 80,000 were crammed into tents in Jalozai. Because of influx over the past months, the United Nations refugee agency, UNHCR, plans to relocate most of the current residents at Jalozai to more established camps in order to make room for the newcomers.

At least before they are moved, the families at Jalozai will receive two quilts and a month's supply of wheat flour, beans, sugar, ghee (vegetable oil), and tea, thanks to an emergency distribution by Catholic Relief Services (CRS) in late November.

CRS has had a presence in both camps since December 2000, mostly providing health education and sanitation. "To be frank, it means we've dug a lot of latrines," says Joe Carney, a CRS communications associate, who visited the Jalozai camp in November.

The food and blanket distribution was aimed at helping the refugees survive the winter. Last year a particularly frigid cold snap killed 150 Afghan refugees in a few days, many of them children.

"The tragedy of last winter, when hundreds of Afghans froze to death in refugee camps, taught a grave lesson of what lies ahead if we do not act quickly," says Luc Picard, CRS's country representative for Pakistan. "This intervention is targeting the neediest families in this extremely needy camp, those whose lives truly depend on it."

Hunger and malnutrition are year-round problems in the refugee camps, but the cold compounds the lack of food. "Studies show that a warm sleeping mat or quilt can be almost as important as eating, because you can lose body weight from sleeping on the ground," Carney says.

There is also a desperate need for thicker canvas tents for winter. "Jalozai is an endless stretch of tents, but most of them are not even suitable tarps you'd put on the floor to paint your walls," Carney says. CRS hopes to distribute some winterized tents. "But not all 80,000 people are going to get them."

The Shamshatoo camp resembles a small city, with mud homes on the camp's outskirts blending into the nearby town. "Some of those people have been there for years, even for decades," says Carney.

Many of the refugees beg in the streets of nearby Peshawar, but others are afraid to leave the camp for fear of being deported back to Afghanistan. Tiny markets have sprung up in the camps, where people sell everything from water to thread out of tiny wooden carts. "People have ways of being entrepreneurial wherever you stick them," Carney says.

But the newest refugees--an estimated 130,000 who have fled since the U.S. air strikes--will have little time to get settled before the harsh weather hits. "We are afraid that we won't get food or shelter before the winter," Amir Mohammed told CRS workers after arriving at Jalozai in late October.

Like thousands of other Afghan refugees, Amir paid a smuggler to get into Pakistan. He and his wife, his brother, and his four children walked for 20 hours on a mountain trail and arrived at 2 a.m. "We were very tired, too tired to walk anymore," he says. Eventually, they ended up at Jalozai, which offers little comfort to new arrivals.

Amir is visibly burdened by the stress of caring for his family in an unfamiliar place during uncertain times. Like most parents, his first concern is his children. "I am worried about them," he says. "We carried bread with us, but that is gone. We'll beg for food at the bazaar if we have to, but my children are dependent on me."

It seems not only have the refugees lost their homes and their land, they are losing hope. Many are demoralized from struggling to survive one disaster after another. The refugee camps do little to boost their morale, offering next to nothing in the way of privacy or dignity. Still, many Afghan people remain proud, and are grateful for the little assistance they are receiving.

Carney recalls a 70-year-old man he recently met in Jalozai. After sticking it out through war and drought, he was finally forced to leave in October after a rocket grenade launcher exploded near his home, killing one of his sheep. He walked with a cane for two days on a rugged mountain path to reach Pakistan.

"He was obviously a very proud man," says Carney. "He told me, `I'm in a very bad situation now. If I got back to Afghanistan, I wouldn't need any help. It's just that right now I need assistance."

Ultimately, they all want to go home. But despite the retreat of the Taliban, reports are mixed about whether the refugees can safely return to Afghanistan. Carney, speaking in late November, says it's too early to tell. "I know people want to go back, but the stipulation is when there's peace," he says.

Until then, thousands of Afghans--young and old--continue to be on the move, trading war and famine at home for an uncertain future in refugee camps.

"It's not getting better," Carney says. "More people are coming."

For information on how to help Afghan refugees, visit the U.S. CATHOLIC Web site: www.uscatholic.org.

MARTIN LUEDERS is a photojournalist living in Washington, D.C. HEIDI SCHLUMPF is an associate editor of U.S. CATHOLIC.