City of Misery, Population 80,000

JALOZAI REFUGEE CAMP, Pakistan —  This is a city of misery, home to more than 80,000 Afghan refugees who have chosen to live in dirt and poverty rather than face hunger and other hardships under Afghanistan’s strict Taliban regime.

Refugees began trickling in to Pakistan soon after the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and have been coming ever since. The newest crop began arriving Sept. 11, fearful that a U.S. strike against Osama bin Laden and the Taliban would mean more danger and privation in their homeland.

Jalozai, in western Pakistan near the city of Peshawar, is sprawling--the country’s largest refugee camp. It includes an old section, with 20,000 families, and a new, tented area where about 3,000 families live in crowded squalor.

Narrow lanes divide the rows of tents.

There is no electricity; cooking is done over open fires with trucked-in wood for fuel.

The only water comes from tanker trucks and must be carried to the tents and makeshift mud dwellings. Sanitation is so poor that many children suffer from eye infections caused by the fetid dust.

There is a school just outside the camp, for boys only. Entering through the narrow door, one sees eight teachers working in six small rooms, dispensing the rudiments of education to about 330 pupils. The boys have no desks or chairs and must sit on the floor for their lessons.

The headmaster, Mohammed Hashem, said he turns away three or four children a day because he has no more room.