wfn.org | Airdrops jeopardize Afghan aid operations, Christian agency says

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Note #6905 from PCUSA NEWS to PRESBYNEWS:

17-October-2001
01388  
  
Airdrops jeopardize Afghan aid operations, Christian agency says 

Dropping food with bombs is dangerous and 'at best' symbolic, aid worker
says

by Laurie Spurr
  
GENEVA - An international network of church aid agencies has criticized
humanitarian airdrops linked to U.S.-led military strikes in Afghanistan,
saying they compromise other aid efforts in the region.

	Action by Churches Together (ACT) International, based here but uniting
church-related relief efforts world-wide, called the drops of food packages
from military planes "ineffective" and even potentially "dangerous" for the
civilian population.

	The airdrops were "jeopardizing the credibility of humanitarian aid in the
region and were not an effective means of meeting the desperate needs of the
people of Afghanistan," said Thor?Arne Prois, director of ACT's coordinating
office, in a statement released on Oct. 15.

	Prois said the airdrops violated basic tenets of humanitarian aid,
including the need for neutrality and impartiality.

	"Simultaneous air strikes and airdrops constitute a total confusion of
humanitarian and military actions," he said. Future relief efforts could be
delayed or blocked if this confusion led Afghan authorities to question the
agencies' neutrality.

	Pilots dropping food had no way of ensuring that it reached the needy, said
Prois, who for four years worked in Afghanistan as a representative of
Norwegian Church Aid (NCA), one of ACT's member organizations. In addition,
people could be injured if they tried to gather food that has fallen on
mined fields.

	"At best these airdrops are a symbolic gesture," Prois said.  

	U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has reportedly admitted that
airdrops are less effective than delivery of aid by land.

	Rainer Lang, ACT press officer, told ENI that while some people were eating
food from the airdropped packages, others were burning the packages because
they thought the food was poisoned, according to refugees.

	"Everybody knows people need long-term aid to get through the winter," Lang
said in a phone interview from Peshawar in Pakistan. "Even if they could
airdrop 100,000 (packages) daily, it would not be enough."

	The office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees reports
that more than 7 million people in Afghanistan need food aid.

	Even before the U.S.-led military operation against the Taliban, the UN had
already declared the situation in Afghanistan, which has suffered a
three?year drought, a humanitarian crisis. After more than two decades of
war, about 3 million Afghans had already fled to Pakistan, and another
million people had been displaced within the borders of the country.

	Since the military operations began on Oct. 7, thousands more people have
been fleeing Afghan cities. The UN, which has removed workers from border
areas due to security concerns, does not have precise figures.

	With neighboring borders officially closed to Afghan refugees, getting
humanitarian aid into the country by road has been haphazard.

	Aid workers talk of individuals crossing the border into Afghanistan
carrying supplies on their backs, but aid convoys have been held at border
crossings for days due in part to security concerns. Demonstrations in the
Pakistan border city of Quetta and other areas, and political strikes
yesterday have further hampered movement.
	"Here everything is guarded," Lang said. "There's a massive presence of
police and army on trucks. It's difficult to move around."

	A convoy of lorries from Church World Service - U.S. ecumenical relief
agency and a member of ACT - today passed the border at Quetta carrying 500
shelter kits for central Afghanistan, where people have fled to escape the
air attacks in the cities - the second such shipment in two days. Eight CWS
lorries had been stuck at the border for a week.

	NCA has been providing two months' worth of wheat and cooking oil to more
than 3000 families in the outskirts of Kabul, the Afghan capital. The agency
and its local partners are aiming to supply food to 20,000 of the neediest
families here and in the mountainous central areas of the country.

	NCA, CWS, the Middle East Council of Churches and Christian Aid, an
ecumenical relief organization based in Britain - all ACT members - are
working with their local partners to get aid to the needy, especially to
mountainous regions which could be cut off with the first snow, perhaps as
early as November.

	These organizations have moved substantial food and supplies to border
areas in Iran, Tajikistan and Pakistan.

	To gain access to the Afghan civilian population, ACT's Prois advocates the
creation of "safe corridors," which would have to be protected by
authorities on both sides of the border.

	His position has received support from the Evangelical Church in Germany
(EKD). In a statement today, Manfred Kock, the EKD chair, called on the
German government to exert pressure for "secure and easily attainable zones
of safety for the civilian population" in Afghanistan.

	"Instead of dropping food indiscriminately from the air, it would be more
sensible to create a safe passage for aid organizations to reach the people
who are suffering," he said.
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