Hope
and Healing
A team from MU's international center for psychosocial trauma traveled to Pakistan
earlier this month to help Afghan refugees.
By WAYNE ANDERSON
Published Sunday, March 24, 2002
Their words paint a dire picture of the past and present, yet they hold out
hope for the people of Afghanistan. Representatives from the University of
Missouri-Columbia’s International Center for Psychosocial Trauma recently
returned from the war-torn nation with accounts of life in refugee camps. The
team taught Afghan teachers, physicians and mental-health workers how to help
children cope with the violence and loss they have endured.
Elizabeth Lowenhaupt, an MU medical student who served as the delegation’s
recorder, said the behavior of children living in the refugee camps near Peshawar,
Pakistan, reflects the collective trauma they have suffered.
"
They all play with toy guns - making sticks into machine guns - and play without
regard to the safety of others," she said. "I watched two teams of
children play a war game. The weak and emaciated ones were the Taliban, and
the strong ones were the Americans, who threw rocks at the Taliban.
"
The teachers we worked with told us that most of the kids in class have school
phobia," Lowenhaupt added. "They are fearful and afraid to leave
their homes because they have seen traumatic incidents and are scared they
will happen again. They seem especially afraid of beards, and they feel helpless."
Lowenhaupt accompanied child psychiatrist Arshad Husain, psychologist Barbara
Bauer, education Professor Venetta Whitaker and journalism Professor Michael
Grinfeld on the trip. The team ran workshops in the Pakistani cities of Islamabad,
Lahore and Peshawar and in a refugee camp near Peshawar.
It was a demanding assignment.
Approximately 2 million Afghans have fled across the border into Pakistan during
the past 23 years to escape war with the Soviets and deadly internal conflicts.
More than half of these refugees live in 127 camps.
During the past five years, many have sought refuge from the strict Taliban
rule that discriminates against women. Severe drought and the threat of starvation
forced other Afghans to leave their homeland for the camps. Most arrived bearing
only what they could carry on their backs through the mountain passes.
The MU team visited Akora Khattak, a small camp in northern Pakistan that provides
food and shelter to 18,000 Afghan refugees. There is a chronic shortage of
water. Some 10,000 children are crowded into a cluster of mud-walled huts on
a dusty plain. The children look unwashed, and most have dirty faces. Life
as a refugee is hard, and staying alive is a hand-to-mouth existence. Some
get only one meal a day. Women who once were schoolteachers in Afghanistan
beg for alms, and their children collect garbage.
Carpet factories in the area employ large numbers of refugees, which has caused
hard feelings among Pakistanis who complain that the large labor pool has driven
down wages and increased local unemployment.
