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Afghan Aid Operation Swinging Into Action
CHAGHCHARAN, Afghanistan, April 6 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - As war and drought-ravaged Afghanistan teeters on the brink of a humanitarian catastrophe, the first major efforts to alleviate the crisis were swung into action Friday.
The International Red Cross Committee (IRCC) distributef food and seeds to farmers in Ghor province in western Afghanistan, badly hit by the drought.
According to Lucas Heitzmann, head of the IRCC in the provincial capital Chaghcharan, this stage of the program, jointly run by the International Red Cross Federation, will distribute 1,790 tons of aid to 10,000 families - some 70,000 people.
"We have asked the choura [the assembly of elders - shura] of each village concerned to identify the most vulnerable families. We will give each 100kg of rice, 65kg of assorted seeds and vegetable oil," Heitzmann told AFP.
The rice was brought in from Pakistan, the oil from Iran and the seeds from a market in Herat, a large city in western Afghanistan, a three-day truck ride from Chaghcharan.
Heitzmann, a 32-year-old mechanical engineer, added that the rice is being provided so the families do not have to resort to eating the seeds, as they were forced to do last year following a paltry harvest.
A British medical relief charity said there had been a significant decline in the refugees health in recent weeks and that what was needed most was food and that many people in camps had not eaten for days while others were eating grass, BBC reports.
Ghor province has been particularly affected by the three-year drought, the worst to hit Afghanistan - which has already been devastated by 20 years of war - for 30 years.
According to the U.N., the war and the drought has already forced the internal displacement of 600,000 people. A further 170,000 have fled to Pakistan, which has already accepted more than 1.2 million refugees, adding to a total of more than two million displaced during the 1979-89 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
The situation in camps, housing displaced families in western Afghanistan, is deteriorating with needs outstripping supplies, the United Nations added.
The six camps for displaced persons in Herat now hold a total of 110,000 people, with 65,000 in Maslakh.
The sanitary conditions are poor and although 1,200 latrines are under construction, there would be a shortfall of more than 2,000 latrines in the Maslakh camp alone.
"On average about 1,000 displaced persons are arriving each day, fleeing drought, conflict, or both," a statement by the office of the U.N. coordinator for Afghanistan said.
Pakistan on Friday declared it had exhausted its capacity to accept more Afghan refugees and rejected U.N. allegations that it was blocking relief assistance to large refugee camps in the country.
Foreign office spokesman Riaz Mohammad Khan said Pakistan had told the United Nations that it should arrange immediate assistance for the displaced Afghans both here and inside Afghanistan.
He said military ruler General Pervez Musharraf reiterated the Pakistani stand when U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan spoke to him on the issue by telephone on Thursday.
He said Pakistan told Annan that it would allow registration of refugees and consider providing sites for more camps only if U.N. agencies would simultaneously provide assistance on the Afghan side of the border.
Musharraf added that the arrival of more than 70,000 new refugees over the past few months had strained Pakistan's capacity to provide assistance.
In Afghanistan, village leaders are unsure of the number of people who have already left their homes as a result of losing most of their livestock and food sources. Most have headed to the larger towns, or to the villages where they hope their parents can offer help.
Erick de Mul, U.N. coordinator for Humanitarian Aid to Afghanistan, had earlier warned of a major catastrophe. A desperate country devastated by two decades of war, conditions in Afghanistan are rapidly deteriorating, he said, according to CNN.
And so far the U.N. has received barely 10% of its annual $226 million appeal for Afghanistan, de Mul added, quoting CNN.
Ghor province, which has an estimated population of 500,000 people, is inhabited almost totally by Tadjikans. It was chosen by the IRCC because there are no other international humanitarian organizations currently operating in the area.
The local head of the IRCC said the organization has faced no particular problems from the Taliban administration, which has been established in the provincial capital for almost five years and controls four of the province's three districts.
Abderrahman Haquani, the local governor commented: "It was fortunate that the aid has arrived, but it will sadly only touch a small amount of the people."
Added Heitzmann: "They [the Taliban] are only insisting that one part of the distribution goes to the population under their control," a move he considers to be a propaganda exercise.
The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNCHR) said Tuesday that 70,000 Afghans had sought refuge at the Jalozai camp where refugees were dying of hunger and disease.
Since last year, as many as 800,000 Afghans have left their homes because of conflict and drought, most of whom are internally displaced inside Afghanistan.
The problems for Afghanistan are long-term, said a U.N. statement, adding that aid to camps and villages in western Afghanistan alone will have to continue or increase for the next 12 months at least, CNN reports.
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