She cowered behind her family's makeshift shelter, too nervous or traumatized to look up, except to shoot anxious glances at her husband as he described their desperate plight.
On her lap lay their young son, squirming in pain until she covered him with a shawl. The woman's husband, Abdul Rahman, said the boy was two years old. But thin and badly undernourished under his wrappings, he looked much younger -- almost a baby.
PHOTO: AFP
Sitting silently next to them on the plastic sheeting was the couple's other son, aged four. His brilliant blue eyes sparkled even as the dust swirled about his face and his mother began to sob into her shawl. "We are destitute," said Rahman, arms spread wide for emphasis, almost encompassing their whole, tiny world.
A blanket slung over a long-handled shovel and a borrowed bicycle was their only shelter. "We have been broken," he said. "Completely broken."
This family is part of the growing number of refugees now rapidly congregating at the southern end of Iran's border with Afghanistan.
With so much attention centred on those trying to get into Pakistan, this other looming refugee crisis has been largely ignored.
But Iran is also keeping its borders closed, the authorities there unwilling to add to the estimated 2.5 million Afghan refugees already in the country after years of conflict and drought. Border guards have orders to shoot, and there are reports of deaths and injuries among those trying to cross illegally.
Already serious, an expected rush of 100,000 refugees -- as the American bombing continues and winter rapidly approaches -- can only mean that these conditions become much, much worse.
The main reception area is at Makaki, near the Iranian border town of Zabol, a hastily-constructed camp about 8km inside a Taliban-held area of Afghanistan. There are not enough tents. People who have arrived in the past week have been left to find their own shelter.
They congregate around the few bee-hive shaped, derelict farmhouses -- relics from when, before the three-year drought, this was an area of intense, fertile cultivation. They erect windbreaks from whatever they have brought with them or whatever they can find.
At least 22 families had trekked from the northern city of Mazar-e- Sharif, 620km away, to reach Makaki camp. But Rahman added that along the way he had heard that there might be as many as 2,000 families heading in that direction. If they were all to arrive, then the camp would be simply overwhelmed.
Already, according to Abdul Laal Zaad Raheem, the local Taliban border commander, there are more than 7,500 people in the camp, with a further 300 to 350 families now waiting to get in. "For the past six days people have been coming here and they do not have a place to stay or medicine or doctors," he said. "There is nothing here for them to gain assistance. We ask all the agencies of the world to help us."
Around the camps, Taliban fighters take on the role of impromptu policemen. Whenever we stopped to talk to people, a curious crowd would gather. Until, that is, they were chased away by young Taliban wielding lengths of metal taken from around packing cases.
Two men undeterred by this came forward to show handfuls of shrapnel and alloy fragments. "It comes from cruise missiles and the bombardment," said one, Said Abdullah, from a village near Kandahar.
"My own brother was killed," he said. "I was there and the house came down after it was hit by a cruise missile. There were nine people in the house, but only one person was left."
Said Abdullah claimed that a bridge that one group was crossing was hit by a bomb, and about 15 people were killed. "George Bush should kill his enemy. Why is he killing us?"he asked. "He is killing innocent people, he is killing the public."
ROLLER-COASTER RIDE: More than five earthquakes ranging from magnitude 4.4 to 5.5 on the Richter scale shook eastern Taiwan in rapid succession yesterday afternoon Back-to-back weather fronts are forecast to hit Taiwan this week, resulting in rain across the nation in the coming days, the Central Weather Administration said yesterday, as it also warned residents in mountainous regions to be wary of landslides and rockfalls. As the first front approached, sporadic rainfall began in central and northern parts of Taiwan yesterday, the agency said, adding that rain is forecast to intensify in those regions today, while brief showers would also affect other parts of the nation. A second weather system is forecast to arrive on Thursday, bringing additional rain to the whole nation until Sunday, it
CONDITIONAL: The PRC imposes secret requirements that the funding it provides cannot be spent in states with diplomatic relations with Taiwan, Emma Reilly said China has been bribing UN officials to obtain “special benefits” and to block funding from countries that have diplomatic ties with Taiwan, a former UN employee told the British House of Commons on Tuesday. At a House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee hearing into “international relations within the multilateral system,” former Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) employee Emma Reilly said in a written statement that “Beijing paid bribes to the two successive Presidents of the [UN] General Assembly” during the two-year negotiation of the Sustainable Development Goals. Another way China exercises influence within the UN Secretariat is
LANDSLIDES POSSIBLE: The agency advised the public to avoid visiting mountainous regions due to more expected aftershocks and rainfall from a series of weather fronts A series of earthquakes over the past few days were likely aftershocks of the April 3 earthquake in Hualien County, with further aftershocks to be expected for up to a year, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Based on the nation’s experience after the quake on Sept. 21, 1999, more aftershocks are possible over the next six months to a year, the agency said. A total of 103 earthquakes of magnitude 4 on the local magnitude scale or higher hit Hualien County from 5:08pm on Monday to 10:27am yesterday, with 27 of them exceeding magnitude 5. They included two, of magnitude
Taiwan’s first drag queen to compete on the internationally acclaimed RuPaul’s Drag Race, Nymphia Wind (妮妃雅), was on Friday crowned the “Next Drag Superstar.” Dressed in a sparkling banana dress, Nymphia Wind swept onto the stage for the final, and stole the show. “Taiwan this is for you,” she said right after show host RuPaul announced her as the winner. “To those who feel like they don’t belong, just remember to live fearlessly and to live their truth,” she said on stage. One of the frontrunners for the past 15 episodes, the 28-year-old breezed through to the final after weeks of showcasing her unique