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U.N. Refugee Chief Calls For Afghanistan Ceasefire
ISLAM-QALA, Afghanistan, April 30 (News Agencies) - U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Ruud Lubbers called Monday for a ceasefire in Afghanistan where war and drought have left a million people facing famine.
"It is really insane when you see the drought and the devastating conditions that they go on fighting," he said on his arrival at this border town following a visit to neighboring Iran, which already supports 1.9 million registered Afghan refugees.
"There have been so many diplomatic missions and initiatives, but [there is] still a situation where people are fleeing."
The former Dutch prime minister's first trip to Afghanistan, just four months after he took over the U.N. refugee agency, comes amid a major humanitarian crisis with 800,000 Afghans made homeless due to drought and war since mid-2000.
It is also recognition that the estimated four million Afghan refugees in Iran and Pakistan, the largest refugee population in the world, need to go home.
But the internecine fighting, which erupted following the Soviet pullout in 1989, has complicated their repatriation, and has continued since the Taliban Islamic militia seized Kabul in 1996.
After his arrival, Lubbers visited the largest of six displacement camps that have sprung up around western Herat city since September, where more than 150,000 people are living in tents without proper food or sanitation.
The U.N. estimates more than a million Afghans could face famine this year unless more international aid is forthcoming, but Lubbers said donors were reluctant to commit as long as the Taliban and opposition forces insist on fighting.
"We simply cannot afford, with the people in this enormous difficulty, to see military violence," he told Taliban Governor of Herat Khairullah Khaikhwa during a meeting later Monday.
He said he would ask leaders from both sides of the conflict to "stop the war for at least six months or a year."
Khaikhwa responded that it was not just war and drought, but U.N. sanctions, imposed in January for the Taliban's alleged support of "terrorism", which were compounding the hardships of the Afghans.
During his four days in Afghanistan, Lubbers will meet Taliban officials as well as ousted president Burhanuddin Rabbani, who controls about 10% of the country through his military commander, Ahmad Shah Masood.
Fierce clashes broke out near Taloqan city in northern Afghanistan on Saturday, an area which has contributed many of the 170,000 refugees who have fled into Pakistan since September.
U.N. officials here said more refugees were believed to have entered Iran due to the drought in western Afghanistan over the same period.
The U.N. humanitarian coordinator for western Afghanistan, Hans-Christian Poulsen, earlier said more than 1,000 people were arriving daily at the camps around Herat from the surrounding provinces, and there was no chance they could return to their drought-hit villages for at least another year.
"We could very quickly face an emergency, especially in Maslakh. The cholera season is coming and that could be devastating," he said.
"If you look at the western region, my guess is that there is still around half a million people at risk."
Poulsen said tents and latrines were badly needed in the camps, especially with the onset of Herat's so-called 120-day winds, which blast the oasis town with hot gusts from the north throughout the summer.
The daily arrivals to the camps around Herat make it the fastest growing displacement crisis in the world and U.N. officials fear things will only get worse with the escalation in fighting during the summer.
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