The refugees here walked for a week or more from Kabul to the north to escape three things: civil war, American bombing, and the drought.

They escaped two. They couldn't walk out of the drought.

This is not an official United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) camp, which by and large have adequate water supply systems organized by one method or another, before the camps are opened. This is a slap-dash arrangement made when the shooting got tough. The drought was already tough.

The Japanese government provides the food and water, which both arrive by truck.

"It is not enough," said Mohammed Karin, the camp director. "We need more."

It is not a unique situation. In Shimshatu camp in nearby Pakistan, refugees are put out on the driest plain within hundreds of miles. Although donor countries, mainly European, have sunk wells, new arrivals must depend on a daily water truck, and dig their own sanitation systems.

When the UNHCR began discussions with the Pakistani government on potential locations for camps for an expected influx of 1 million refugees, all of the first seven campsites suggested by Pakistan had no access to water.

"And after three years of solid drought the water table is two hundred or so feet (70 meters) lower than normal, " said UNHCR spokesman Yussof Hassan.

Countries and landowners do not give rich, well-irrigated lands to refugees.

But even those who can stay at home and farm don't have it much easier in Afghanistan. According to UNICEF about 13 per cent of Afghans have access to safe water, and about 12 per cent have access to a sanitation system. The figures are lower for rural areas.

The World Health Organization (WHO) said that Afghanistan, because of its lack of good clean water, and its population's dependency on dirty water to survive, suffers one of the highest per capita rates of water born diseases on the planet.

That's why WHO put in water systems in Kandahar to the south, Jalalabad near here and two areas further to the north. They also put in sanitation systems worth millions of dollars.

And they work.

Just a few miles from this refugee camps rapidly flowing water is channeled through simple but effective irrigation systems and spread over farmland plowed hedgerow to hedgerow. A nearly perfect square of tobacco plants, green and moist pops up in a broad plain of dusty rock that looks more like the surface of the moon than earth. In a field surrounded by rocks, a farmer is attempting, successfully, to grow water-quenching rice. The field is flooded, as it should be this time of year.

But that's here, a half hour's drive to markets in Jalalabad and Torkham on the Pakistani border, and within irrigation distance of the Hindukush Mountains from where water can be channeled.

According to UNICEF and WHO conditions in extreme rural areas of Afghanistan are much worse. And although the bombing appears to be nearing and an end, the last rainy season about three months ago was a disappointment. The next one is not due until next year.

And, in the word of camp director Karin, although the international community's aid apparently works effectively, " it is not enough."