These are the people who will really suffer in the event of a war.

With bitter winter weather on the way, many in the war-ravaged and drought-stricken land are already forced to eat grass and animal fodder, aid workers in Islamabad said....

Khaled Mansour, regional spokesman for the WFP, said pre-famine conditions existed in Afghanistan, where 85 percent of the population live in villages and food distribution is seriously hampered by the latest crisis....

Those arriving through Pakistan's North West Frontier Province go to the squalid Jallozai camp where they have to live in tents in temperatures that can soar to 45 Celsius (113 Fahrenheit) in the summer and below zero in the winter....

Across the province are at least a dozen large camps of mud houses, tents and narrow dusty alleys where barefoot children play amid flies and garbage.

Schools do not exist.

According to UNHCR figures, Pakistan already hosts two million Afghan refugees and Iran 1.5 million....

Millions of Afghans have been displaced by 23 years of war, economic ruin and a severe drought in its third year....

"Afghanistan was on the brink of a catastrophe anyway, and then this happened," Tearfund spokesman Keith Ewing said, referring to the September 11 attacks in the United States.

"About 75 percent of Afghans don't have safe water, 90 percent don't have adequate sanitation and 75 percent don't have access to the most basic health care. One in every four kids dies before the age of five," said Oxfam's Matt Grainger.