Bush War I--refugees dying in the cold

Thousands of homeless families are freezing in camps near Kabul, Afghanistan. From the NY Times:

While the cold will lose its grip eventually, the desperate poverty of many Afghans will not, a fact that has focused attention on the failure of the government and the aid agencies to find a long-term solution for the homeless. Refugees are still being encouraged to return to Afghanistan for political reasons even though the country cannot look after them, critics say.

An estimated 10,000 homeless people are in Kabul, about 4,000 of them in two squatter camps. In addition, groups of displaced people are living in public buildings and abandoned ruins in as many as 25 locations throughout the city. Most are refugees who have returned from camps in Pakistan in the three years since the fall of the Taliban. Some families have been living all that time in tents, with the men scraping up a little work as porters in nearby fruit markets.

Meanwhile, scores of expensive private villas are going up around Kabul, some of them built by commanders and government officials on former government land, a sign of growing inequities.