Fazil, Mohammad and Torialy all arrived in Britain last year from Afghanistan after escaping the Taliban militias.

They live in a flat in Kemp Town with a fellow asylum seeker, also called Mohammad, who arrived seeking a safe refuge from Iran.

Each has been given permission to stay in the country while his application is processed because Britain's asylum laws recognise they would be in danger if they returned home.

They are just four of the record 71,160 people who arrived in Britain claiming asylum during 1999 - up from 46,015 during the previous 12 months.

And they may have a long wait while the Home Office processes their applications - the backlog also passed the 100,000 mark for the first time during the year.

That backlog is an embarrassment for the Government, which has seen the number of people waiting double since it took office and declared the Tories had presided over a system that was a shambles.

About 125 asylum seekers are thought to be living in Brighton and Hove.

At the same time, there are more than 200 homeless families in bed and breakfast in the two towns - all of it adding pressure to the welfare system's creaking safety net.

Home Secretary Jack Straw suggested three-quarters of people claiming asylum were economic migrants in search of the good life.

The claim is at odds with his own department's figures, which show 36 per cent of applications processed during 1999 were, in fact, genuine.

In short, more than a third of all asylum seekers are like Fazil, Torialy and the two Mohammads - fleeing murder, torture and persecution at home.

Torialy's story is typical.

He is 25, by trade a baker, and escaped across the hills to Pakistan at night, paying a guide to lead him through the minefields that litter the border.

Speaking through an interpreter, he says he paid a smuggler $9,000 to bring him to Europe.

He was bundled onto planes and lorries for 4,000 miles and finally hidden in a truck and brought to Britain - he thinks via the Channel Tunnel.

He said: "The next thing I knew the police are telling us to come down from the lorry, saying this is London."

With him he had $50 in cash, two shirts and a pair of trousers.

He said: "My country was at war for 20 years. When the Taliban came to power they slaughtered everybody to do with the past government, so we escaped."

The Taliban are indeed brutal. Taliban militias are accused of indiscriminate killing, torture and detention of civilians on a mass scale - men and women are publicly beaten for not conforming to a strict Islamic dress code.

Among those at risk are academics, professional men and women and members of some ethnic and religious minorities. Today, Afghans form the world's largest single refugee group.

Of the asylum seekers coming into Britain last year, most were from the former Yugoslavia, followed by Sri Lanka, China, Somalia and Afghanistan.

Like other asylum seekers, Torialy will have to survive on a food voucher worth £25 plus £10 cash a week when Labour's Immigration and Asylum Act becomes law on April 1.

They will lose the right to benefit payments and, in many cases, will have no choice where they are sent to live.

It is a prospect that horrifies human rights groups such as the Refugee Council, where a spokeswoman said: "It is a very, very, very draconian piece of legislation which will make asylum seekers, who are already the most vulnerable group in our society, more vulnerable.

"What, in effect, is happening is the Home Office is setting up a parallel benefit system including its own currency, which is a voucher."

The introduction of food vouchers, which can only be exchanged at certain shops, is what most angers organisations like the Refugee Council, which claims the system will humiliate and stigmatise asylum seekers.

Another critic is Kemp Town MP Des Turner, who said: "I don't think the legislation is very good. I think the main criticism is the support is too little and the voucher system too rigid."

Instead, he says, the Home Office should process applications quicker and be more vigilant at the ports and airports where genuine and bogus asylum seekers alike enter the country.

The Home Office insists the act is intended to reduce the number of bogus claims and speed-up processing genuine applications for refuge.

A spokesman said: "The UK has always welcomed genuine asylum seekers and will continue to do so, but the Government is committed to dealing firmly with abuse."

In the meantime, Torialy, like many others, will continue to be a victim - if not of persecution at home, then misunderstanding and prejudice abroad.

He said: "We look forward to one day going back to our own country but we don't have a choice.

"One day I want to be living with my family. People think we are beggars but we are not - we are here out of desperation."

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.