Feature: Displaced Afghan families seek assistance, plead for lasting peace amid increasing strife

"Our living conditions are becoming unbearable due to the security situation here getting worse and we are in desperate need of humanitarian assistance to survive, particularly as Afghanistan's bone-chilling winter is fast-approaching," head of a displaced family, Bismillah, 35, told Xinhua recently.

Having left his home in the Marja district of the restive Helmand province due to protracted skirmishes between government forces and Taliban militants a month ago, Bismillah, living with relatives in the besieged provincial capital of Lashkar Gah city, lamented that no assistance has been received.

Continued war and security incidents have rendered about 8,000 families homeless in the poppy growing Helmand province over the past three months, according to Naqibullah Zamaryal, head of department for Displaced people and Refugees Affairs, in Helmand's provincial capital Lashkar Gah.

The majority of the displaced families have been relocated from Lashkar Gah city, about 2,000 displaced families have shifted to the neighboring Kandahar and the remaining have gone to Kabul, Ghazni and other parts of the country to resettle in safer places, Zamaryal said.

"I am thankful to my relatives for providing shelter and warm hospitality to my family in Lashkar Gah," Bismillah said, adding, "It is difficult however and ultimately impossible to stay with relatives forever."

More than 1.1 million people have been displaced by the conflict over the past 15 years in militancy-plagued Afghanistan, with 277,331 people being displaced in 2016 alone, according to UN Special Rapporteur on the human rights of internally displaced persons, Chaloka Beyani, who visited the country last week.

About 30,000 families, according to officials, have been displaced due to the war in the northern Kunduz, southern Helmand and the western Farah provinces over the past couple of months and the number of internally displaced families will likely further increase due to the ongoing conflict in Afghanistan.

However, the government is determined to tackle the problems of internally displaced persons (IDP) by providing humanitarian assistance and temporary shelters to the displaced families.

"Unfortunately, a number of our countrymen have been displaced due to the conflict and security problems and relocated to safer places including Kabul," Director of IDP department in the Ministry for Refugees and Repatriation Affairs, Mehr Khuda Sabar, told Xinhua on Tuesday.

He also added that the Ministry for Refugees and Repatriation Affairs in collaboration with national and international aid agencies has helped thousands of displaced families to return to their homes over the past couple of weeks.

Nevertheless, Sabar confessed that the majority of displaced families of southern Helmand province have been living along with their relatives in provincial capital Lashkar Gah and the government is doing its best to provide temporary shelters to those who are living outside.

"We left our home for Lashkar Gah after the Taliban fighters occupied our house and used it as their frontline to attack government forces nearly a month ago and since then we have been living with relatives in Lashkar Gah city," head of a 10-member family, Esmatullah, told Xinhua.

The government has provided humanitarian assistance including food to 630 displaced families in Lashkar Gah, Zamaryal, who is in charge of IDPs in Lashkar Gah city said, adding that the government will also repair the homes of IDPs, besides providing more assistance to them.

"Enough is enough, we are fed up with war, the war has destroyed whatever we had, it is our dream to see the end of war in this country and I am praying day and night for my dream of lasting peace and the chance to live in a peaceful environment to come true," a displaced woman Fatima told Xinhua. Endit