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U.N. Warns Of Humanitarian Disaster In Afghanistan
WASHINGTON & ISLAMABAD, Feb 2 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - On Friday the United Nations warned of a humanitarian disaster in Afghanistan due to cold weather in response to a rising number of deaths, over 500, in displacement camps located in Pakistan this week.
Eric de Mul, United Nations Coordinator for Afghanistan, predicted a "dramatic" deterioration in the humanitarian situation in Afghanistan, where drought and war have played large roles in driving more than half a million people from their homes.
"We are looking at an extremely difficult year with many people on the move and many who will try to cross its borders," he said, referring to the impact of Afghanistan's civil war and the worst drought in memory.
"We have to come to terms with the fact that we will see many people die. We have already seen this happening in Herat" in western Afghanistan.
Taliban refugee repatriation department chief Syed Raz Mohammad Agha told a Pakistani local daily, The News, that 504 people had died in freezing temperatures, in addition to the 110 deaths the U.N. confirmed earlier this week.
The deaths were recorded in several displacement camps around the old silk route trading center of Herat, where some 80,000 people have gathered in recent months after being driven from their villages by the drought.
Some 500,000 people have become displaced inside Afghanistan in the past two years with another 150,000 have fled to neighboring Pakistan since mid-2000.
U.N. officials this week said the drought had put more than 300,000 lives at risk, or roughly 50,000 families, who have left their villages in search of food and water in western Afghanistan.
Temperatures around Herat had plunged as low as minus 25 degrees Celsius (minus 13 degrees Fahrenheit), as the camps ran out of blankets and tents. U.N. officials state that response from donors has been "bad."
Five thousand families are crammed into 1,700 tents throughout the six displacement camps around Herat, with many having to sell their livestock, farming tools and even the beams from their homes to escape the drought.
"We have seen people die there in a controlled setting [the camps] but it is obvious that in the countryside where we have a cold spell many more people have died," de Mul said.
He said he had called for a meeting of donors in Pakistan next week to discuss the grave shortfalls in almost all essential relief goods as well as the slow response to the U.N.'s $229 million appeal for Afghanistan this year.
Envoys from Switzerland, Germany and Canada are planning to visit the camps inside Afghanistan in the coming weeks to see the devastation for themselves, he said, while urging other countries to do the same.
"I guess it is not yet clear to the donors how serious the situation is," he said, adding that only about half the 2001 appeal was expected to arrive.
"If one does not see it with one's eyes directly then it is always difficult to understand.
"We will have a dramatic situation on our hands ... We have a watershed in the situation."
World Health Organization medical officer for Afghanistan, Naveed Sadozai, said the situation was a "progressively increasing disaster," with "a lot of malnutrition" that could lead to epidemics of disease.
The U.N. says the drought has destroyed almost all rain-fed crops, which are essential to the 85% of Afghanistan's 22 million people who lead subsistence lifestyles.
UNICEF representative for Afghanistan Louis-Georges Arsenault said the chance of displaced people near Herat returning to their villages in time for the next harvest season in May was "zilch."
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