(15 Dec 2002)
1. Wide shot bullet scarred and bombed out buildings that house returning Afghan refugees
2. Mid shot bombed out house
3. Various of Afghan refugee Mahin who has just returned from Pakistan, shoveling the debris to build a room
4. Various of his young children, one of them crying from the cold
5. Mid shot another of his children in damp room
6. Wide shot Mahin's wife looking out of the house
7. Tight shot of small tin bucket being used to make a fire
8. Wide shot wife heating her hands
9. Close up of her hands over fire
10. SOUNDBITE: (Dari) Mahin, Afghan refugee newly returned to Kabul from Pakistan:
"There in Pakistan at least we were surviving with a little help and some work. But here we have no work and no assistance. We are caught between a rock and a hard place. Our children are freezing and their teeth chatter through the night because it's so cold."
11. Wide shot refugee camp in centre of Kabul
12. Children playing outdoors
13. Close up of girls damaged hand from cold and poor hygiene
14. Wide shot mother and her children
15. Close up of girl's feet
16. Close up of girl eating fruit peel
17. Rain
18. Various people sitting in tent, warming themselves by fire
19. Set up shot of Maki Shinohara, Spokesperson, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR)
20. SOUNDBITE: (English) Maki Shinohara, Spokesperson for United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees:
"It's a difficult situation. We do have about 2 million people returning back to their homes, this is including not only the refugees but also those displaced from within Afghanistan. If you have 2 million people come back in such a short period of time which is about 7 months time and then already quickly hitting a winter season then it's definitely difficult for each individual families to especially get through this first winter."
21. Wide shot children huddled with hands near their faces
22. A young girl coughing and making a fire by her tent
STORYLINE:
It has been a cold welcome for the 1.8 million Afghan war refugees who streamed back into their country after the fall of the Taliban last year.
Some spend freezing nights in bullet-scarred buildings in western Kabul, while many don't even have ruined walls to help protect them from the cold, sleeping huddled together under plastic tents, counting on blankets and body heat to survive.
Most of those who returned home after spending years in squalid camps in neighbouring Pakistan and Iran were hoping for a better life in the post-Taliban Afghanistan.
But with few jobs and fewer places to live, many are now just hoping to survive Afghanistan's harsh winter.
Mahin has returned to Afghanistan with his family from Peshawar in Pakistan. He is trying to build shelter for his family from the ruins of a destroyed house in west Kabul.
The UN refugee agency estimates 560,000 people will be particularly vulnerable this winter because they lack adequate housing, food and the means to keep warm, UNHCR spokeswoman Maki Shinohara said.
She said: "It's a difficult situation. We do have about 2 million people returning back to their homes, this is including not only the refugees but also those displaced from within Afghanistan.
In the run-up to winter, the United Nations has been trying to head off any potential crisis by distributing vital supplies - tens of thousands of blankets, wood stoves, fuel and plastic sheeting - to those in need, Shinohara said.
Authorities hope those supplies will be enough to get desperate families through the two harshest months of the Afghan winter, January and February.
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