Living under Taliban rule

This is just one of the tales related by the quiet, relaxed woman sitting in front of me, a woman who has spent years helping people who have fled their homes, through her work with the North of England Refugee Service. Many of their stories feature terrible hardship and persecution, but she is still shocked when she hears of life under the Taliban.

When she left Afghanistan herself 25 years ago, life was very different. Then, the communists were seen as the enemy, there was no quarrel with the West and women occupied a very different place in society.

Under the Taliban, women can be lashed for venturing from their homes without being accompanied by a man, for failing to wear their burqa - a garment which covers their entire body - or any number of trivial matters that would constitute ordinary daily life in any other country.

She will not give her name for fear of reprisals, especially after recent attacks on suspected asylum seekers, but she is all too aware of the suffering of her fellow Afghans.

"In Afghanistan they are in constant terror. There's no such thing as freedom over there. It is total fear," she says. "They have to pray five times a day over there, early morning, mid-morning, lunchtime, 4pm and late evening. If somebody is working in a shop and that shop is open during the ten minutes of prayer time, they could get arrested, beaten up, publicly humiliated, or put in prison."

Nor is Afghanistan a country of plenty. The endless civil war, the drawn-out fight with Russia and economic sanctions imposed through the United Nations to force the hand-over of Osama bin Laden has left the country on its knees.

Millions of people have fled, with the latest UN High Commission on Refugees estimates suggesting almost a tenth of Afghans have left their homeland and are living in exile. Western nations have set up an Afghan Support Group to deal with the growing refugee crisis, with one-and-a-half million Afghans massing on the border with Pakistan, but unable to cross.

According to Oxfam, starvation and disease threatens more than five million people, but the threat of looming military action has forced aid agencies to withdraw many of their workers. And, in the face of such a human crisis, the Taliban has threatened to execute Afghans who have contact with Westerners, making the delivery of aid even more difficult.

In the Middlesbrough office of the North of England Refugee Service, the Afghan exile has an inexhaustible supply of tales illustrating the appalling conditions inside her homeland. She remembers one couple with their three girls who arrived in Britain with nothing. In a simple gesture, she left them food and a few cheap hair accessories for the children, but the family was overcome with gratitude.

"They were in a dreadful, dreadful condition. I went to the supermarket for some basics like food and some pants for the little girls because they did not have a change of clothes.

"I saw a little bag with hair accessories and bits and pieces for the girls. In total it must have cost me £15 in the supermarket, but for them it was such a lot. The mother said, 'My God, my God, you have done this for us?'

"She said they hadn't eaten fresh bread for many, many years. The children were delighted at seeing eggs. I was seeing this and thinking how lucky we are in this country. People should know about these things. It's not a flood of refugees coming in and taking our money."

Despite the lack of televisions and newspapers in Afghanistan, she says stories from refugees suggest Afghanistan is gripped with fear at the prospect of American air strikes.

Some of the refugees who pass through the doors of the North of England Refugee Service, at its bases in Newcastle, Sunderland and Middlesbrough, have managed to contact family back home. They report that people have been given permission to leave the capital, Kabul, as long as they do not take any possessions with them. But the lack of reliable information has also caused people to flee rural villages and make their way to the capital in the belief they will be safe.

In Torkham, the border area between Pakistan and Afghanistan, hundreds of thousands of frightened people have gathered, but, in the desert-like conditions, they have little water or food.

Once women in Afghan dominated professions from teaching to medicine as the men engaged in battle with the Russians. Now, the only career available to women - educated or uneducated - is begging. With no teachers, the education system has collapsed and at least 95 per cent of the population is now illiterate.

And what makes the situation worse is the fact that two decades of fighting, and the resulting death toll, mean 28,000 families are headed by war widows, with no means to support their families.

For the refugee worker, the plight of women is particularly heart-breaking. "Years ago the women were the educated people in Afghanistan," she says. "That was just after the Russian invasion. Now those women who were teaching can't do anything. They beg in the streets."

But the chances of a woman escaping the Taliban are slim. "Women don't have the capacity or power to leave Afghanistan. If they have any kind of money, first they will send their children or male members of their family. They will do anything to send them out of Afghanistan, because they really sacrifice their own life for children.

"Those war widows are the heroes of Afghanistan. Under the Taliban they can't go anywhere without male company. They can't even wander from village to village because it is too dangerous."

She says those who do make it across the borders must then find about £10,000 to pay the people who smuggle them abroad, or see their families back home killed.

'Usually the smugglers charge them between £8,000 and £10,000 to get here. To pay, they sell their land, give them the deeds of their property or have an IOU. If they don't pay it back, they will get into trouble. A lot of refugees are desperate to earn money and pay it off and save their family's lives."

But determination to escape the Taliban is evident from the regular stories of asylum seekers turning up in a Western country after clinging to the bottom of a fast-moving train or rowing across rough seas in a dingy.

Lack of education among the bulk of the population is one reason why the Taliban has been able to seize power in Afghanistan and exert such a far-reaching influence. "With about 98 per cent of Afghans illiterate and its isolated, land-locked location, they are very easily influenced by religion," she says.

"There has also been a lack of education over the years and never enough information about the wider world, so it was an easy target. I don't think the women in Afghanistan will support the Taliban. I can honestly say these women are good Muslims, but they want to live without the normal things of day-to-day life denied to them."