By Charlene Porter
Washington File Staff Writer

Washington -- The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) reports that an estimated 1,000 Afghans each day have fled violence or famine in their country since September 11 when terrorist attacks upon the United States sent the Central Asian nation into a new state of uncertainty.

An UNHCR representative speaking in Washington October 15 said the number of refugees so far falls well below the agency's prediction that as many as 1.5 million refugees could pour from Afghanistan -- a prediction that John Fredriksson characterized as the "worst-case scenario." The numbers are lower than anticipated in part, Fredriksson said, because both Pakistan and Iran are attempting to keep their borders closed to restrain the entrance of more Afghan refugees.

After more than 20 years of war in Afghanistan and several years of drought, Fredriksson said Pakistan has already received 2 million refugees; Iran has sheltered 1.5 million. Both nations now suffer from "donor fatigue," the UNHCR official said. As a result, UNHCR reports difficulties have arisen in negotiations with Pakistani officials for further availability of sites on which to make preparations and camps for the thousands more that could emerge from Afghanistan should the worst-case scenario come to pass.

Fredriksson said UNHCR will have no capacity to respond to a "massive outflow" of refugees without cooperation from Pakistani officials to allow some progress on construction of refugee camps. The world "does not want to repeat the tragic situation" of the Persian Gulf War, Fredriksson said, when thousands of Kurdish Iraqis, terrorized by their nation's army, fled to the northern mountains with no shelter, no sanitation and little food.

The director of the U.S. Agency for International Development, Andrew Natsios, has repeatedly emphasized that the best way to prevent an overwhelming outflow of refugees is to move food supplies into the country to combat drought-induced famine, now in its early stages. The United States contributed more than $180 million in the last fiscal year to that end, and the Bush administration has pledged another $320 million for the year ahead.

Natsios hopes that Afghans will not follow other refugees, but stay home where experience shows their chances for survival are greater.

"The million people who died in the Ethiopian famine of 1985 died in internally displaced and refugee camps because they were malnourished when they got there, their immune systems had collapsed from malnutrition, and then there were disease epidemics that spread through the camps," Natsios explained at a Washington briefing October 12. "We can encourage people voluntarily to stay in their villages and then try to move food into their villages rather than have them move."

The World Food Program (WFP) is the chief coordinating agency for those food shipments into Afghanistan. The agency is currently trying to move commodities across several different routes from warehouses in Iran, Pakistan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan.

Fredriksson said there is little scientific method for predicting whether the Afghan refugee flow will remain at low levels or develop into a human tide that would overwhelm the humanitarian resources in place. The length of the U.S. bombing campaign, the fate of Usama bin Laden, actions of the Taliban militia and the opposition Northern Alliance are all unknown factors that could influence Afghans to leave their homes and run to the borders.