They live in improvised tents, sleeping beneath flimsy sheets of plastic that magnify the heat and welcome the rain. They eat seldom, often nibbling their way around the green mold of stale bread. They swat at great squadrons of flies that circle madly above the latrine pits.
The Jalozai camp is located near the Pakistani city of Peshawar, not far from the border with war-ravaged, drought-parched Afghanistan. In just a few months, it has become notorious, even among veteran relief workers, who are appalled by the lingering squalor.
The refugees themselves, as if adopting an official slogan, repeatedly call Jalozai ``a graveyard for the living.'' They await help. ``Where are the Muslims?'' asked a man named Hamidullah. ``We're Muslims; they're Muslims. Why don't they take care of us?''
A woman boldly interrupted him. ``Forget the Muslims,'' Nasima Ghafori said. ``What about humanity? Where are the flag bearers for humanity?''
Actually, most of humanity's flag bearers are fed up.
Pakistan, like many other nations, is tired of being a repository for refugees, and the sustained misery at Jalozai is entirely intentional.
Authorities here also want to protest the withering interest of the world. In 1981, when Afghanistan was a hot spot in the cold war, the United Nations program for refugees in Pakistan spent $87 million, according to numbers supplied by the organization. In 2000, the amount was $13 million.
``The Afghans have been relegated to the background, and all we hear from the United Nations is about donor fatigue,'' said Muhammad Naseem Khan, the state commissioner for Afghan refugees in Pakistan's Northwest Frontier Province. ``Really, these people have to go back to their own country. We cannot take care of any more of them.''
For the last 22 years, Afghans have endured unremitting conflict, first against Soviet invaders, then against each other. More than 2.5 million of them have resettled in Pakistan, itself a poor country. Hospitality has gradually eroded into hostility, with Pakistanis now complaining that the refugees steal jobs, rob stores and sell drugs.
Last summer, yet another huge exodus began, and at least 700,000 Afghans -- uprooted by civil war, downtrodden from hunger -- have been on the move. Many have sought assistance in their own country; Maslakh, a camp near the city of Herat, is filling with 1,800 people a day. Others cross the mountains into Pakistan, favoring the donkey trails and avoiding the main roads.
About 150,000 of these people have entered the Northwest Frontier, where the strategy now is to shunt them to Jalozai, a place short of water and long on scorpions. The United Nations, as exasperated with Pakistan as vice versa, considers the camp unfit and asks, at the very least, for Pakistan to register the newcomers as bona fide refugees.
That bureaucratic step involves questioning about why they came. Without this paperwork, the United Nations will largely withhold aid. ``Otherwise, how do we know who in that open field is of genuine concern to us?'' said Yusuf Hassan, a spokesman for the United Nations commissioner for refugees. ``Our main mandate is to protect people and give them some kind of status. We need to interview them and classify them.''
The need for an administrative prerequisite was lost on Amir Muhammad, 58, who had just sent his seven children to beg from tent to tent, asking them to prevail on the poor to share with the poorer. The day before, his right wrist was fractured in a scuffle at the food distribution site. Now it was wrapped in a splint of twigs and string.
``Some days, trucks come with water, some days no,'' he said glumly, putting his hand on a nearby child as a specimen of thirst. ``This orphan has the measles. A very high fever.''
There are a few clinics here, but little else by way of aid. Private charities deliver a flickering supply of sugar, wheat and beans. There is never enough, and people fight and quarrel. The strong eat better than the weak. ``They'd kill each other over a scrap,'' said a Pakistani official who oversees the rationing.
Jalozai is divided into 33 sectors, each electing a leader from its ranks. If there is a food delivery, these men -- and they are all men -- come to the distribution point. One recent day, Hamidullah, who uses that single name, was given 191 chits for his 650 families.
``Now you will see what it is like to be responsible for life or death,'' the refugee said, returning to the sprawl of tents. People rushed toward him. ``There is not enough for everyone,'' he announced firmly. ``Most of you will get nothing.''
With its acres of colored plastic, and with its legions of listless people, Jalozai looks like a medieval battlefield where the wounded rest under tattered banners. Families spill out of the makeshift tents. Some children, already lacquered with filth, use a mound of soil as a pillow.
A few weeks ago, the United Nations secretary general, Kofi Annan, tried to visit here during a stop in Pakistan. At the last moment, the government canceled the trip, citing security concerns. Others suspected a different reason, citing shame.
The refugees, having come so far to gain so little, confess their own mortification. ``My life was a failure before, my life is a failure now,'' said Abdul Qayuum, an old man with a forked beard. ``We have lost all our honor here. We live side by side without any privacy.''
Nasima Ghafori, 48, a widow, was once a person of some means. ``I am not a reptile or a snake that I should eat mud,'' she said. ``I do not want to live amid 50,000 people.''
After a few moments, her face seemed to crumble, and tears cascaded from her eyes. She wiped them away with her shawl. ``I am humble now, but I once owned a house and we had a table where my children and I could eat. We were human beings.''
Finally, she reclaimed her composure, enough to engage in sarcasm. ``Great improvements have been made here,'' she said with a sweep of her hand. Her finger took aim at a small cloth enclosure around a hole in the ground. It was a toilet. Women of modesty no longer had to relieve themselves in a group, with enough of them to hold up blankets that served as walls.
Gulab Gul, a father of eight, walks with the support of two canes. ``It was a mistake to bring my family here,'' he said. ``But we were running from war and hunger. Things were so bad we boiled grass and ate it.''
The idea of Pakistan as a promised land now seems foolhardy. Some men leave camp each morning to look for labor. However, those willing to work for 30 cents a day now find that they have been supplanted by those willing to toil for half.
Anguished and destitute, most say they want to return home. Soon, the sun will punish them with temperatures of 110 degrees and more. They know it and fear it.
But the spring crop has already been forsaken to drought. Instead of a harvest, milder weather in Afghanistan will bring only more war. The Taliban militia, which controls 80 to 90 percent of the country, carries out an annual summer offensive. This year promises to be different only in that the opposition forces of Ahmad Shah Massoud seem better armed.
In quiet, discreet remarks, some in Pakistan's government contend that Jalozai is infested with Massoud supporters. The military government in Islamabad backs the Taliban. Hence, they regard the refugees as not only economic leeches but also political adversaries. They would prefer them back in Afghanistan.
Plans are being considered. ``In two, three months, we will push all these people back across the border in batches,'' said the province's home secretary, Syed Mazhar Ali Shah. ``Let the U.N. provide them camps in Afghanistan.''
At present, the United Nations is disinclined to do so. ``The Taliban is not a recognized government,'' said Mr. Hassan, the spokesman. ``Camps could be used to detain people who oppose them -- sort of a concentration camp.''
Those geopolitical concerns, however real, seem remote from life in Jalozai. Last weekend, a son was born to a woman named Sherbano as she lay on a pink blanket beneath the plastic roof of her tent. The last few months had traumatized her. She had no milk in her breasts.
``What will my boy eat?'' she said wanly. ``Like everyone else, he will eat green tea.''