Palmer: Now two weeks after the rout of the Taliban, the people of Herat are rediscovering their old lives.
02:03
The victorious men of the Northern Alliance have fallen upon the spoils of victory that came so easily into their hands, eagerly taking over this spectacular city's ancient castle and the weapons left in it. But just half an hour's drive out of town is a place where victory over the Taliban has meant nothing.
02:29
Palmer: This looks not so much like a refugee camp as a small city carved from mud.
Maslakh refugee camp It's called Maslakh -- 'the slaughterhouse', its population unknown, but estimated at anywhere between 150,000 and 300,000. Officials think it's the biggest refugee camp in Afghanistan and one of the largest in the world. Stretching for kilometres along the road towards the Iranian border, Maslakh rose out of the clay in less than two years.
02:43
The rout of the Taliban from the north, the west and central Afghanistan hasn't stopped the flow of people to Maslakh. Liberation doesn't make crops grow.
03:09 IslesSuper: SIOBHAN ISLES, MEDECINS SANS FRONTIERES Isles: We expect certainly that over the next few weeks that the numbers will increase dramatically. The main reason why people come from the outside provinces into, particularly, Maslakh camp, is because of the drought. Now some people that arrived yesterday were saying that they want to leave their town where they live now to come into Maslakh, because they know that the road will be closed soon and they have no food for the whole of the winter time.
03:20 Palmer: That's the dilemma here. If it snows heavily in central and northern Afghanistan this winter, those who stayed behind in areas where harvests failed could be cut off from food aid. If it doesn't snow, the chances are that the next harvest will be weak, too, and there'll be nothing to eat the following winter.
03:47 Farouk: Allam Farouk's family made the inevitable decision. They came on the back of donkeys from Ghur, travelling for weeks to arrive at 'camp slaughterhouse'. It was no flight from misery, though, his 4-year-old son is now buried here.
04:05 Farouk [translation] : He went very pale, then he couldn't breathe properly. His condition was very bad, so I went to buy a coffin and some cloth. When I got back he was dead.
04:20 Palmer: And just as they don't know how many people are living here, aid agencies don't know at what rate people are dying. The kind of surveys of population and health conditions that are normally the first things done at camps like this were made impossible by the Taliban. Not only is that hampering attempts to help those in genuine distress, it's allowed the opportunistic to take advantage of the system.
04:33: At the transit centre they're handing out blankets and water bottles. This is where the newly arrived, often with nothing, come to get the basic material aid that will allow them to survive their first few weeks here, often in the open. But it's not going smoothly.
04:58: Palmer: Again, the problem comes down to the lack of a proper population registration here. The food agencies simply don't know who's a genuine newcomer and who's fraudulently applying for more material aid.
05:17: In the camp and in Herat there's a ready market for those who've manipulated the system to collect extra blankets and the like. Officials are so frustrated by the problem that they're thinking of starting from scratch, re-registering every single person in the camp. That could help them understand whether they're winning or losing the health battle, too, As winter brings the possibility of a measles epidemic and the respiratory diseases, which, in Maslakh, can be deadly.
05:29: And certainly because a lot of the new arrivals are arriving without shelter. They are living out in the open. They're malnourished, so they become much more vulnerable to any form of infection at all. Over the last two months we've seen a change in the pattern of malnutrition. Before, we had one type of malnutrition that was relatively -- it was the classical very skinny-looking children. Now we're getting another type which indicates some kind of micronutrient deficiency, so the children classically look very different to what they looked before.
05:57: Palmer: How do they look?Isles: They've got oedema, swelling of their feet, of their hands and also of their face.
06:31: Palmer: What the United Nations really wants to happen here, of course, is for everyone to leave. No-one expects that to begin until spring and even then, they'll have to be given the means. This man who left Mazar-e-Sharif because of the bombing and the drought, watched two children die from the cold on the long journey to Maslakh. He sees no easy path home.
06:39: I think in the new year when the winter pass, we will go if the organisation help to take us back. But we are not sure -- if the organisation, if they don't help with us, we cannot go back. 06:59
Credits: Reporter: Tim Palmer 07:19s
02:03
The victorious men of the Northern Alliance have fallen upon the spoils of victory that came so easily into their hands, eagerly taking over this spectacular city's ancient castle and the weapons left in it. But just half an hour's drive out of town is a place where victory over the Taliban has meant nothing.
02:29
Palmer: This looks not so much like a refugee camp as a small city carved from mud.
Maslakh refugee camp It's called Maslakh -- 'the slaughterhouse', its population unknown, but estimated at anywhere between 150,000 and 300,000. Officials think it's the biggest refugee camp in Afghanistan and one of the largest in the world. Stretching for kilometres along the road towards the Iranian border, Maslakh rose out of the clay in less than two years.
02:43
The rout of the Taliban from the north, the west and central Afghanistan hasn't stopped the flow of people to Maslakh. Liberation doesn't make crops grow.
03:09 IslesSuper: SIOBHAN ISLES, MEDECINS SANS FRONTIERES Isles: We expect certainly that over the next few weeks that the numbers will increase dramatically. The main reason why people come from the outside provinces into, particularly, Maslakh camp, is because of the drought. Now some people that arrived yesterday were saying that they want to leave their town where they live now to come into Maslakh, because they know that the road will be closed soon and they have no food for the whole of the winter time.
03:20 Palmer: That's the dilemma here. If it snows heavily in central and northern Afghanistan this winter, those who stayed behind in areas where harvests failed could be cut off from food aid. If it doesn't snow, the chances are that the next harvest will be weak, too, and there'll be nothing to eat the following winter.
03:47 Farouk: Allam Farouk's family made the inevitable decision. They came on the back of donkeys from Ghur, travelling for weeks to arrive at 'camp slaughterhouse'. It was no flight from misery, though, his 4-year-old son is now buried here.
04:05 Farouk [translation] : He went very pale, then he couldn't breathe properly. His condition was very bad, so I went to buy a coffin and some cloth. When I got back he was dead.
04:20 Palmer: And just as they don't know how many people are living here, aid agencies don't know at what rate people are dying. The kind of surveys of population and health conditions that are normally the first things done at camps like this were made impossible by the Taliban. Not only is that hampering attempts to help those in genuine distress, it's allowed the opportunistic to take advantage of the system.
04:33: At the transit centre they're handing out blankets and water bottles. This is where the newly arrived, often with nothing, come to get the basic material aid that will allow them to survive their first few weeks here, often in the open. But it's not going smoothly.
04:58: Palmer: Again, the problem comes down to the lack of a proper population registration here. The food agencies simply don't know who's a genuine newcomer and who's fraudulently applying for more material aid.
05:17: In the camp and in Herat there's a ready market for those who've manipulated the system to collect extra blankets and the like. Officials are so frustrated by the problem that they're thinking of starting from scratch, re-registering every single person in the camp. That could help them understand whether they're winning or losing the health battle, too, As winter brings the possibility of a measles epidemic and the respiratory diseases, which, in Maslakh, can be deadly.
05:29: And certainly because a lot of the new arrivals are arriving without shelter. They are living out in the open. They're malnourished, so they become much more vulnerable to any form of infection at all. Over the last two months we've seen a change in the pattern of malnutrition. Before, we had one type of malnutrition that was relatively -- it was the classical very skinny-looking children. Now we're getting another type which indicates some kind of micronutrient deficiency, so the children classically look very different to what they looked before.
05:57: Palmer: How do they look?Isles: They've got oedema, swelling of their feet, of their hands and also of their face.
06:31: Palmer: What the United Nations really wants to happen here, of course, is for everyone to leave. No-one expects that to begin until spring and even then, they'll have to be given the means. This man who left Mazar-e-Sharif because of the bombing and the drought, watched two children die from the cold on the long journey to Maslakh. He sees no easy path home.
06:39: I think in the new year when the winter pass, we will go if the organisation help to take us back. But we are not sure -- if the organisation, if they don't help with us, we cannot go back. 06:59
Credits: Reporter: Tim Palmer 07:19s