http://www.boston.com/dailynews/319/world/Anti_Taliban_troops_secure_Kab:.shtml

Anti-Taliban troops secure Kabul, but wary refugees in Pakistan not packing yet

By Mort Rosenblum, Associated Press, 11/15/2001 02:37

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) If a new day is dawning in Afghanistan, you'd never know it in Mud Town, a squalid slum now 20 years old. Afghans here are eager to go home. But no one is packing yet.

''I don't follow politics,'' replied Mohammed Jan, ancient-looking at 65, when asked about jubilation in Kabul. Then he took another swing of his pick, deep in a pit, to gather mud for his crumbling back wall.

Officially, this refugee town is named I-11, for its Islamabad grid designation, but most people call it Katchi Abada Urdu for Mud Town.

It is a warren of adobe hovels, with fetid open sewers running down its dirt tracks. Although some of the 2.5 million Afghan refugees in Pakistan have made their fortune, most live in places like this.

Like the other 20,000 heads of families here, Jan has no TV or electricity to run one. Some have radios but little time to listen to them and no money for batteries. If he had a newspaper, he couldn't read it.

''My news is the word of people I trust,'' Jan said, ''and I will believe there can be peace in Afghanistan only when fighting stops.''

Jan sat through the Soviet occupation but finally fled Ghazni in its last year, in 1989. Each time rival warlords unleashed new assaults back home, he dug up more mud to repair his temporary home.

He earns 90 cents a day, when he can, in a nearby vegetable market. His 18-year-old son makes the same with a donkey cart. And his other son, 8, learns militant Islam at a religious school because it is free.

Up a steep hill, Haqmed Mohammed Riaz, 48, runs a school in the settlement's little mosque. Along with a Quran class, he teaches math, history and art. A few books line his outdoor library shelves.

Riaz closely follows events back home and has no plans to end an exile that began in 1992 when he fled Konduz. ''We had only war,'' he said. ''No government, no work, no schools, no hospitals, no decent life.''

Troops of the northern alliance had chased the Taliban from Kabul and most of the north, he knew, but he dismissed that as yet another round of more of the same.

''These people are only gunmen, not leaders,'' Riaz said. ''When we have decent politicians of all nationalities, a central government, an army, a life for children and old people, then maybe we will have peace.''

He condemned the United States for bombing civilians, and he also opposes the Taliban. Afghanistan, he concluded, must be rescued by Afghans.

Mud Town's economy amounts to a number of corner shops, like the unnamed hole in the wall run by 40-year-old Amanat Khan. It offers tea by the bag, a few bars of soap, some sugar, rice, and packets of henna.

Khan is a Pashtun like the Afghans, but he is a Pakistani. His books explain why Pakistan has not done more for so many refugees in its midst.

He takes in just over $8 on a good day, and on most days clears a profit of 75 cents. With that, he feeds his wife and eight children.

''The Afghans are good people, and they earn their own way,'' Khan said. He would be happy to see families able to return to their homes even though that would erode his clientele, but he does not expect it.

''God knows when there will be real peace,'' he said. ''So far, there has been nothing but fighting for 25 years.''

The few foreign visitors who venture into Mud Town invariably draw a crowd. On one such recent occasion, 18-year-old Lal Mohammed pressed in close as if eager to add his opinion to the shouted dialogue.

As it turned out, he was simply curious for outside news. He had never been to school, religious or otherwise, and could not read. His father fled Afghanistan when he was an infant and found little work in Pakistan.

Mohammed's dollar-a-day laborer's pay feeds his 8-year-old brother who, he said, was born when his father was 72.

But Hafiz Rahmani, also 18, had plenty to say. He makes a minor fortune the equivalent of $6 daily selling onions and potatoes in the market. With his profits, he enrolled in an English course.

He also bought a radio and keeps it in fresh batteries.

''I like the Taliban,'' he said. ''They are good people, and they kept law and order in Afghanistan, not like the northern alliance.'' But, he said, ''There is no work over there, and I don't like beards.''

Rahmani's family left five years ago. Asked when he planned to return, he replied with a shout: ''Tomorrow.'' Reflecting a moment, he said, ''Well, maybe in a few months. Or later.''

-- Anonymous, November 15, 2001