Why we can't turn our backs on Afghanistan

THE September 11 terrorist attacks on the United States were unforgivable, Hugh Bayley says. But we in the West must shoulder some of the responsibility. Back in the 1980s, when the Afghan mujaheddin were fighting the Soviet Union, the West was generous in its support. But when the Soviets left and Afghanistan's interminable civil war began, Western nations lost interest. It was left to Pakistan and Iran, both impoverished nations themselves, to shoulder the burden of looking after the millions of Afghan refugees who fled across the border to escape the war, drought and famine.

"That bred a great deal of anger and cynicism about the West," Mr Bayley says. "The Taliban exploited those conditions to recruit and train extremists whose goal was to hurt the West."

If, when the dust has settled on the war now raging in Afghanistan, the same thing is not to happen all over again, it is vital the West does not let down the Afghan people again, he says.

"In the long term we must stick with the Afghan people and spend as much and more on humanitarian aid and reconstruction than we have had to spend on military action. It is the right thing to do, both in humanitarian terms and because it is in our own interests. If we don't, we could face a never-ending war in the region - and further terrorist attacks."

Mr Bayley has just returned, with other members of the House of Commons Select Committee on International Development, from a four-day fact-finding visit to refugee camps near Peshawar, on the Pakistan side of the border near the Khyber Pass.

His visit took in two camps - one, at Sham Shato, set up in December 1999 for refugees fleeing drought and famine; the other, at Kachagarhi, set up during the war against the Soviets. He also visited the World Food Programme operation in Peshawar itself, from where food and other supplies are being despatched by convoy through the Khyber Pass into Afghanistan.

His visit left him, on the whole, more optimistic than he had expected. With the help of international aid, including from the UK, conditions in the two camps he visited, he says, are not too bad - though he admits that is relative.

"There is adequate food," he says, describing the conditions at Sham Shato, where 53,000 people have arrived since December 1999. "When people arrive, they get tents. Over the six to nine months that most people have been there most have built themselves mud-brick houses. With the help of aid agencies, including Britain, there are schools provided for both boys and girls, a health service that covers basic primary health care and a vocational training college funded by Britain."

The college trains refugee families in basic skills such as carpentry, shoe-making and carpet-weaving, so that when they can eventually return to their own country they will be able to earn a living.

It sounds good: but Mr Bayley himself admits that only about a third of children in the camp go to primary school, and only a 'small number of people' have access to training at the college.

Many of the refugees at Sham Shato, Mr Bayley says, fled drought and starvation rather than war: but one grim fact seems to belie that. "The shoemakers were all amputees," he admits, "people who had lost limbs in the fighting, and in one case a small child whose father was so severely disabled he cannot work."

It was in Sham Shato that Mr Bayley met Aziz Akimi, an Afghan aid worker who had fled only recently from the city of Herat in North Western Afghanistan and who claimed the Taliban were seen - in Herat, at least - as invaders, and that the US bombing was welcomed. Good news for George Bush. What Sham Shato refugees generally seemed to agree on is that they have had enough of war - and want to return home as soon as it is safe. "The single thing that keeps them away is fear," Mr Bayley says.

Which is where the UN may come into its own. With the aid operation in full swing, earlier fears of starvation seem unlikely to come true, at least in the short term, Mr Bayley says. Aid workers he spoke to seemed 'quietly confident' they would be able to get enough food into the country to last until next year's crops.

But if it is to be safe for the refugees ever to return home, they will need stability and security. Just handing over the country to the warlords of the Northern Alliance once the war against the Taliban is won would be a kind of betrayal.

Most Afghans, Mr Bayley says, would like to see a UN peacekeeping force, "because they don't trust the warlords".

Let's hope that this time, we don't turn our backs.

Updated: 10:31 Tuesday, December 04, 2001