Feature: Afghan tent dwellers wait in vain for normalcy to return as wintery climes add to misery

"I escaped a brutal war and the Taliban's atrocities six years ago and since then have been living under a tent here in Kabul just waiting for normalcy to return to Helmand," Alyas Khan, 70, told Xinhua recently.

Pointing at a torn tent in a makeshift camp in the Charah-i-Kambar locality on the western edge of Kabul city, the greying Khan said that he and his family had experienced frigid winters and baking summers under this simple tent, while praying for an end to the conflict and life of peace, but all, as yet, in vain.

"With each passing day, the weather gets colder and I am sure that snowfall will further add to our hardship in this harsh winter," the displaced man said, adding emotionally, "We have no heating system and no way to purchase coal or wood to keep the tent warm."

Nowadays, Kabul is getting colder and colder day by day, with the mercury plunging well below zero in a city surrounded by snow covered mountains.

Like Alyas Khan's family, 79 more families have lived in the makeshift camp over the past six years with the hope of returning to their home provinces one day with their former honor and dignity intact.

"Contrary to our hopes our living conditions are going from bad to worse," another resident of the camp, Aman Gul, 37, told Xinhua.

"In spite of pumping billions of U.S. dollars via the international community to Afghanistan for more than a decade, our tent has not been changed into a mud house," an exasperated Gul said.

Longing for his home province, the downtrodden man complained that the administration just provides a few kilograms of coal to each family in the makeshift camps in winter to keep themselves warm, but it is not enough, saying the government has to find sustainable solutions for the internally displaced people.

Continued militancy and protracted conflicts, according to officials, have rendered 1.2 million Afghans as Internally Displaced people (IDPs) in the strife-torn Afghanistan; while more than 4 million others are still living as refugees in Pakistan and Iran and have been waiting for permanent peace to descend before they can return to their homelands.

"I am homesick and eager to return to my home in Helmand but I will surely be killed," Gul said, adding that the brutal and bloody war is raging on between government forces and Taliban militants in parts of Helmand province.

Recalling the Taliban's fanatic policies as being dreadful, the camp dweller went on to say that he still remembers how the Taliban fighters publicly hung, executed and amputated the hands of alleged offenders who refused to obey their rules.

Helmand has been the scene of Taliban-led militancy and drugs abuse and trade over the past few years and more than 170 people have reportedly been killed from warring sides in parts of the restive province over the past couple of days. Endit