Afghanistan, in the words of Antonio Donini, deputy head of the United Nations relief mission there, "is one of the world's most difficult places to survive."
Three decades of almost perpetual war, brutal governments interspersed by Soviet occupation and the worst drought in 30 years have left close to a million homeless and sent 3.6 million Afghan refugees fleeing to neighboring Pakistan and further abroad.
Those who remain live in hell on earth. Famine, disease and religious fanaticism stalk the land. Hospitals can be closed simply because their doctors do not have long enough beards. A quarter of all children die by the age of five. Life expectancy for adults is 45. Education for girls is forbidden beyond the age of eight and literacy has dropped to 30 percent.
The ruling Taliban, an Islamic militia that took over 95 percent of the country five years ago, is still waging war against a northern opposition army headed by Ahmad Shah Masoud. But that has not stopped it from harboring notorious terrorists such as Osama bin Laden or helping Islamic rebels in Kashmir and Chechnya.
Isolated by international sanctions, the Taliban's mullahs now are biting the hand that feeds them. In their zeal to create the world's purest Islamic state, they seem intent on driving out all the Western relief organizations that are Afghanistan's last remaining lifeline.
The edicts coming out of Kabul are so harsh and sometimes so bizarre they make Iran's brand of Islamic revolution seem almost benign.
In January the Taliban's supreme leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar, decreed that anyone converting to Christianity would be executed. In March he ordered the destruction of priceless historical artifacts, two enormous stone Buddhas carved between the 2nd and 5th centuries. In May, Afghanistan's tiny Hindu minority was told to wear yellow badges, supposedly to "protect" them from the Taliban's religious police but in reality to single them out as infidels.
Later that same month the U.N. World Food Program was informed it could no longer hire Afghan women to work in 116 bakeries that feed 300,000 widows and orphans. The Taliban also issued new regulations that placed all foreign aid workers under the jurisdiction of Islamic law and the religious police.
Foreign women are forbidden to drive. They and their male counterparts cannot play music, wear "immoral" clothes, drink alcohol, talk to Afghan women or photograph living things. Penalties for violating the rules range from expulsion to death by stoning.
In June, the religious police began attacking hospitals, shaving the heads of doctors and male nurses as punishment for not having long enough beards. One doctor was pulled out of an operating theater in mid-surgery and the patient died. A hospital for Taliban war-wounded run by the International Committee of the Red Cross was shut down.
In early August, Shelter Now, a German-based charity, also was closed by the Taliban's Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice.
More ominously, 24 staff members were arrested on charges of trying to spread Christianity. Eight are foreigners: four Germans, two Austrians and two Americans. Intense diplomatic efforts are under way to save them from the death penalty.
Mullah Omar has since decreed that international aid organizations can no longer communicate by e-mail or use the Internet; this in a country with no proper postal service and few working phones. He did not specify a punishment, only that it would be "in keeping with Sharia law," which was written long before the Internet existed.
Life is even tougher for the average Aghan. All forms of entertainment including television, cinema and music are banned. Women are barred from working and cannot appear in public unless heavily veiled and accompanied by a male relative. Men must wear beards and pray five times a day. Those who don't obey these edicts are flogged and jailed.
The World Health Organization reports that the extreme oppressiveness of the Taliban regime has created a mental health crisis. "People find it difficult to remain normal in an abnormal society," said one WHO doctor, explaining why the country's few psychiatric hospitals are overflowing with patients suffering deep depression. Many are women.
The lucky ones get to escape, like the 438 boat people now marooned in a Norwegian tanker denied entry to Australia. They say they would rather drown than go back.
Holger Jensen is International Editor of the Rocky Mountain News. E-mail: hjens@aol.com