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Refugee camp in Daman District, Kandahar Province

An open desert plain just off a road that Afghans now refer to as the "Bloody Highway," has become a dumping ground for displaced people, forced out of Pakistan by a mandatory repatriation order.

The deadline was April 15 and in the week that followed, 1,200 families have now crowded into a refugee camp in Daman District, just a 20-minute drive from Camp Nathan Smith (PRT), where Canadian Reconstruction Teams are deployed.

Refugees here, armed with ratty old rugs and a few thin blankets, have been forced home to an unwelcoming country still dominated by warlords, still crawling with foreign armies.

Inside the camp, the first thing that hits like a brick wall, is the stench of human waste and sickness, so strong that even those, who now call it home, cover their noses to protect against the pungent smell.

Children lie in clusters on the ground, seemingly lifeless, covered in flies and sick with diarrhea and fever. The camp doctor shakes his head, knowing with no medicine there is little he can do. He lost three children to disease in the first few days of their arrival.

Pediatric medicine is in short supply. In fact, his entire stock consists of a few boxes of scabies lotion and an old beer cooler containing vials of vaccine, spoiling in the 48-degree Celsius heat. Ironically, for a camp teeming with hundreds of children, the only thing in huge supply is a cupboard full of birth control pills and condoms. The doctor laughs as he opens a box of condoms. "These don't seem to be working either."

Particularly disheartening is the fact that not far away, the medical unit at Kandahar airfield base has stacks of soon-to-expire pediatric kits. A staffer who didn't want to be identified admits it's just too unsafe now for their mobile medical team to venture into these camps and administer healthcare to the sick and dying.

Even the NGOs have pulled out. Camp Superintendent Mohamed Nabi Rahimullah Safi says "no one has come here and offered us any help." Last year he travelled the 20 minutes to the PRT for a meeting with "the Canadians... nothing changed and no one ever came."

Minister of International Co-operation Josee Verner spent all of 20 hours in Kandahar this past week (on April 13). An accompanying press release refers to her discussions with the Office of the United Nations Human Rights Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) regarding "the plight of the most vulnerable in refugee camps" but when pressed by reporters on specific action on the part of Canada, she offered none.

At the camp, looking embarrassed, Safi says: "We do what we can to improve conditions ourselves and while it may sound funny, we need everything: tents, medicine, security."

Lack of security, while not as urgent as medicine, is equally life-threatening. When the camp first opened after the fall of the Taliban in 2001, it was easier to control. The UNHCR provided 200 tents and the number of refugees remained manageable. Now, with the influx from Pakistan, 2.4 million Afghans coming home, all bets are off.

About 700 families arrived at the Daman camp in one night.

The day supervisor, Ashmah Tullah, says as he rifles through the hundreds of new applicants waiting to be processed "we are so confused about how to control the crowd, we cannot manage them, security is not satisfactory."

These camps have become shelter for the Taliban now moving back into Kandahar Province along with the hot weather. With plenty of working-age young men, sitting idle, this desert tent city is ripe for recruitment of the bitter and the bored.

Despite the grim surroundings and overpowering stench, the children not tasked with collecting water from the old leaky pump, also provided by UNHCR in 2001, collect rusty old bottle tops -- the Afghan equivalent to marbles. Their enthusiasm belies the fact that they've gone without food for days. With distended stomachs and vacant eyes, they still challenge each other to a competitive game of Pepsi caps. Little boys give in to the universal desire to giggle while girls aged 4 and 5 run around in women's black patent shoes more than 3 times their size.

Between the rows of canvas tents, an old iron tea pot smokes, over a small fire of brush and garbage. There is no rice here either, a daily meal consists of packaged pound cake, crackers and cans of beans. Even that is running out. Still proud though, the supervisor invites us to stay for lunch, his curiosity is superseded by our Afghan fixer's desire to leave. "We have stayed too long," he says. "The Taliban know we're here, it's no longer safe."

As we leave the camp, the crowd out front, still waiting to be processed, is getting restless. With only two staff members able to tackle the pile of paperwork, the line moves slowly. The official stamp and a thumbprint, entitles them to a small cash grant from the Afghan government, a welfare cheque of about $60 US.

It would go along way if there was anything to buy.