Islamabad | Tuesday
RELIEF groups have delivered only eight percent of food aid urgently needed to sustain half a million starving Afghans through the looming winter, according to the World Food Program.
They are the most desperate of more than six million Afghans dependent on international aid but even the luckier ones – about two million people — have enough food to last just one month, said WFP representative Khaled Mansour.
Mansour said the most concerns surround the 500 000 people in the remote central highlands in and around Bamiyan province who need at least 23 000 tons of food to survive the winter.
But the US military campaign in Afghanistan and the ruling Taliban regime’s hostility to foreign aid workers has meant only 3 000 tons have been delivered, all in the past week.
Mansour said time was running out for food to reach the central highland Afghans by road. ”This area will be cut off by snow in late November, early December,” Mansour said on Monday.
”After that the only way to get food into those areas will be by air drops.”
Mansour insisted the WFP would be able to drop food into those areas throughout winter, but conceded there were no guarantees the Taliban would allow this to occur.
For the WFP and other non-governmental organisations (NGOs) to be able to deliver food by air, they require the Taliban to guarantee security for the planes and aid workers on the ground.
”It’s do-able but we need those security assurances,” Mansour said.
However, in the current circumstances, this appears virtually impossible.
The Taliban has forced all foreign aid workers to suspend operations in Afghanistan over the past two months through an openly hostile, and often violent policy of harassment.
Its soldiers have seized control of a WFP warehouse containing more than 1 500 tonnes of food, looted and ransacked the organisation’s offices around the country, stolen its radios and vehicles, and assaulted local staff.
The Taliban also imposed a ”tax” on a WFP food convoy of 475 tons trying to get from the Pakistani city of Quetta, near the border, to the western Afghan city of Herat. WFP revealed on October 11 that Taliban officials were demanding 32 dollars for each ton of aid bound for Herat, a total of more than $15 000, which the organisation described as unacceptable.
Nearly three weeks later, Mansour said WFP was still trying to negotiate with the Taliban to drop the charge.
Mansour said the US military campaign, launched on October 7, was also delaying food aid but played down the impact of the aerial bombings.
”Our answer has always been it would have been far easier and faster to work under peace conditions,” he said.
”Having said that, we have been working under very tough conditions in one form or another for years in this country.”
However other aid groups not linked to the United Nations have been more critical of the effects of the military action in getting food to the six million Afghans dependent on aid.
Six international aid agencies on October 17 called for a one-month pause in the US bombings to allow food supplies, cut off by the military campaign, to be delivered before the severe winter sets in.
But the United States ignored the appeal by Oxfam International, Britain’s Islamic Relief, Christian Aid, CAFOD, Tear Fund and ActionAid.
Regardless of who is to blame, Mansour left no doubt that millions of people across the country could starve to death unless food deliveries were stepped up over the next few weeks.
”So far this month the World Food Program and NGOs have been able to deliver enough food inside Afghanistan for only two million people for just one month,” he said.
”This is only a third of the Afghans who need food aid in this country.
”Those who we can not reach maybe can cope now in many places inside Afghanistan but, in a few weeks when winter hits and the meagre food stocks we have are depleted, the grim prospects of starvation will become much more threatening.” – Sapa-AFP