EVEN before the bombing starts, we have a million refugees here from the
natural and political disasters in Afghanistan. The drought has denuded their
pastures, obliterated their forests, wiped out their flocks and devastated their
agriculture. And they are deeply scarred from wounds inflicted by the Soviets,
the Mujahedin, the Taliban and others. As one old man from Kandahar, the Taliban
stronghold just over the border, put it to me: “We are being crushed between
drought from the heavens and the Taliban on the ground.” When a reporter here
asked one little girl in a camp what she most wanted…
Letter from Quetta
By Usman Qazi
6 October 2001
