KABUL -- Surrounded by squalor, 9-year-old Naim Gul raises his hand to beg for a cheap pen.
The child, one of seven in a nomadic family from central Afghanistan, has spent over a year confined to the compound of the former Soviet Embassy in Kabul, the country's devastated capital.
The embassy complex, the center of political power during the decade of Afghanistan's occupation by Soviet troops, now houses about 4,000 refugee families displaced from their homes by a yearlong drought. Relief officials say this group of 30,000 people is just the tip of the iceberg. Across Afghanistan, up to 1 million people are in similar straits, having been forced to leave their homes in search of food and shelter.