wfn.org | Aid groups on Afghan border wait for violence to subside

[NewsDesk <NewsDesk@UMCOM.ORG>]

Nov. 19, 2001 News media contact: Linda Bloom7(212)870-38037New York
10-21-71BP{541}

NOTE:  Photos available for use with this story.

By Paul Jeffrey*

PESHAWAR, Pakistan (UMNS) - The dramatic collapse of the Taliban in
Afghanistan has raised hope that humanitarian aid can be moved quickly to
millions of Afghan civilians who face hunger.

But aid workers on the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan said that as
of Nov. 17, they were still unable to get food and other emergency supplies
through to those who need them.

Continued fighting between the Taliban and Northern Alliance fighters and
bombing by U.S. warplanes have convinced many truck drivers not to risk
navigating the road over the Khyber Pass, the aid workers reported.

A truck carrying 400 tents to displaced families inside Afghanistan has been
stuck at the Turkham border crossing west of Peshawar since Nov. 12. Several
trucks are stopped at the border because drivers fear continued fighting
near Jalalabad, a city on the road to Kabul.

The tents were provided by Norwegian Church Aid (NCA) and Christian Aid (CA)
to the Agency for Rehabilitation and Energy Conservation in Afghanistan
(AREA). Both NCA and CA are members of Action by Churches Together (ACT), an
international network of church-based disaster relief organizations that
includes the United Methodist Committee on Relief (UMCOR) and Church World
Service (CWS).

Mohammed Naeem, coordinator of Afghan Relief, which is supported by ACT,
said that despite press reports that the Taliban had retreated from the area
around Jalalabad, the situation remains far from settled. "Many Taliban just
took off their turbans and put on other hats," Naeem said.

In several areas of Afghanistan, combatants of the Northern Alliance have
taken over in the wake of the Taliban pullout. Yet sporadic killings and
widespread looting of relief supplies continued in several parts of the
country, according to aid workers. Several vehicles belonging to the United
Nations and private aid agencies have been stolen in the chaos.

Although long frustrated by the active opposition they suffered from the
largely Pashtun Taliban, aid workers confessed to having mixed feelings
about the Uzbek, Tajik and Hazara warlords who make up the Northern
Alliance.

"They are the liberators of Kabul today, just as the Taliban were the
liberators of Kabul five years ago when they freed people from the grasp of
the guys who form the Northern Alliance today," said Geir Valle, director of
operations here for NCA.

Continued bombing along the border also inhibits the movement of relief
materials. An Afghan agricultural development agency supported by
ACT-Netherlands had the windows blown out of its offices at Jaji, in
Afghanistan's Paktia province. The offices of all U.N. agencies and
non-governmental organizations in Jalalabad were looted on Nov. 14. Local
staff in Jalalabad of the Danish Committee for Aid to Afghan Refugees were
seriously beaten.

The Pakistan government supported the Taliban before President Pervez
Musharraf accepted U.S. financial incentives to switch his country's
allegiance. Yet in the wake of the Taliban's reported demise, Musharraf has
yet to reopen much of Pakistan's 1,500-mile long border with Afghanistan.

In Peshawar on November 16, scores of foreign journalists congregated
impatiently for hours outside the local office of the United Nations High
Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), waiting for permission from Pakistani
authorities to join a UNHCR convoy from here to Kabul. At the end of the
day, Pakistani officials remained adamant that the border would remain
closed and the journalists returned to their hotels.

More than 2 million Afghan refugees live in Pakistan, and Pakistani
officials hope that at least half of them can be motivated to return home
when hostilities cease. The refugee flow from Afghanistan, already a steady
current after three years of drought, picked up in volume following the
beginning of the U.S. bombing campaign on Oct. 7.

Aid workers reported that refugees are watching and waiting to see whether
the conditions stabilize inside Afghanistan. AREA's director, Masoom
Stanezkai, said many refugees in Pakistan had suspended the purchase of new
items to avoid having to eventually carry home more weight.

Several aid agencies had been cooperating with the UNHCR and Pakistan's
government in establishing a new string of camps that were originally
destined to hold Afghan refugees near the border and prevent them from
penetrating further into Pakistan. In the wake of the Taliban's apparent
collapse, Pakistan officials hope many of the refugees will start returning
home, and they quickly altered their plans and designated the prospective
border camps as way stations for refugees returning to Afghanistan.

Valle predicted Pakistan will "very strongly encourage" the refugees to go
home, but warned it would lose support of the UNHCR and non-governmental
organizations like NCA if the return was anything but voluntary.

Valle said ACT members were also being asked by the Pakistan government to
help establish a camp for internally displaced families at Shar Shahi, deep
inside Afghanistan near Jalalabad. Valle said NCA might transport water
equipment it obtained for refugee camps inside Pakistan to the new camp at
Shar Shahi. Yet he warned that establishing camps for displaced families was
not a long-term solution.

"Long before the bombing started, people had been displaced from their rural
villages by the drought," Valle said. "They shared what they had with each
other for as long as they could, but that solidarity ran out. They sold off
their carpets and goats until they had nothing left, then they left for the
cities or for other countries. If we want them to go back home, we've got to
carry out food distribution programs, build water systems, and rehabilitate
farms and housing in the wake of the bombing -- all factors that will
contribute to pulling them back home."

For now, however, planning those long-term programs remains difficult.
Communication between aid workers here in Pakistan and their counterparts
inside Afghanistan has been re-established in several places, although in
other areas it remains impossible.

According to Julia McDade, the CA representative here, aid agencies are
ready to respond quickly once communications and transportation links can be
fully re-established. She said that winter snows had not yet completely
closed off several areas of northern Afghanistan that may soon become
unreachable.

Massive food caravans from outside the country won't be enough to help all
the 7.5 million people in Afghanistan who face hunger in the next six
months. Yet aid officials say some food is available inside the country. The
problem is that unemployment in the cities and drought in the countryside
have left most Afghans unable to afford it. Valle said NCA and other
agencies are buying what food they can inside the country in order to avoid
the costs and delays of transporting commodities from the outside.

Whether the food will arrive to hungry villages on time depends largely on
whether the political situation can stabilize in coming days. McDade said a
key element to halting the conflict is whether Afghans feel there is a
viable alternative to the Taliban, something other than the feuding warlords
of the Northern Alliance.

"If the people can own the solution that the international community is
brokering with Afghan leaders, then they will reject the Arabs and the
others who supported the Taliban, and turn them in," McDade said. "But if
their sense of hope for the future is squashed, then the Taliban will be
given a chance to reorganize. This solution has to come about soon, in the
next four to five days, or the suffering of the people will be prolonged."

#  #  #

*Jeffrey is a United Methodist missionary in Central America. He visited
Pakistan on special assignment as an information officer for Action by
Churches Together (ACT).

*************************************
United Methodist News Service
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