wfn.org | Humanitarian assistance faces new challenges in Afghanistan

[NewsDesk <NewsDesk@UMCOM.ORG>]

Nov. 20, 2001 News media contact: Linda Bloom7(212) 870-38037New York
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By Paul Jeffrey*

PESHAWAR, Pakistan (UMNS) - After surviving years of drought, land mines,
and chronic internecine fighting, war-weary Afghans now face a chaotic
future as feuding warlords carve their country into separate fiefdoms.

"We were here when the Russians were finally thrown out, and there was an
immense hope that things were going to get better, that peace was coming
soon, that we could finally get on with development," said Kjell
Godtfredsen, director of the emergency program in Pakistan for Norwegian
Church Aid (NCA), in a mid-November interview.

"Yet then within a very few short days it all fell apart and the country was
plunged into civil war," she added. "It's starting to feel like that period
of history all over again."

NCA is a member of Action by Churches Together (ACT), an international
network of church disaster agencies that also includes the United Methodist
Committee on Relief and Church World Service.

One of the most ominous signs that the situation is deteriorating inside
Afghanistan is a declaration from the Northern Alliance warlords controlling
Kabul that all international agencies and non-governmental organizations
must cease their humanitarian efforts for the next week.

"It seems they want to make sure they have complete control, without
competition from anyone," said Godtfredsen.

In what appears to be a related move, the Northern Alliance commanders
controlling the capital have also urged Great Britain to remove most of its
special operations troops guarding the Bagram airbase north of Kabul.
Several Northern Alliance leaders, including those aligned with former
President Burhanuddin Rabbani, an ethnic Tajik, have carved up Kabul
neighborhoods in a pattern reminiscent of the last time they ran the show in
Kabul, a period that led to far more suffering and destruction in the
capital than during the Soviet occupation.

Shiite Muslims, a minority in Afghanistan, are particularly worried about
Rabbani. Karim Khalili, the leader of the Shiite faction in the Northern
Alliance, marched his 3,000 troops to the edge of the capital to bring
pressure on Rabbani to share power. Khalili called on the U.N. to send
peacekeeping troops, something Rabbani opposes.

Many aid workers here believe the country's best hope lies in the return of
King Zahir Shah from exile. The king has promised to convene a council of
tribal elders that would design Afghanistan's new government.

In another sign of deteriorating conditions inside the country, four
international journalists were killed on the road from Peshawar to Kabul,
near Jalalabad.

Security conditions around Jalalabad had caused trouble for aid agencies
trying to transport needed materials. Two trucks carrying 400 tents provided
by NCA have been stopped at the border crossing just west of Peshawar for
more than a week. The drivers refused to go, citing the likelihood of losing
their cargo to looters. Yet Godtfredsen reported that the drivers were
scheduled to leave on Nov. 20, even though the security situation remains
unsettled.

"There's a risk we'll lose the shipment, but it's a risk we're going to
take," she explained. "If we store the tents too long in one place, it also
costs us, so we get to the point where we're better off risking losing them.
It's a risky business, but the important thing is getting the food and
supplies to those who need help right away."

Godtfredsen said that if the tents get through to Kabul, where Christian
Aid, a British organization, will transport them to the western city of
Herat, then NCA will send more shipments by road from Pakistan. Several
other parts of the country are considered more secure, and six trucks
carrying food provided by NCA left Kabul Nov. 19 for Bamyan and Ghazni.

NCA staff said they talked Nov. 19 with their local staff in Kabul, who
managed to call out by using a satellite phone. "They are OK but they're
laying low," said Godtfredsen.

The border between Afghanistan and Pakistan has been militarized in the last
week. With U.N. officials reporting an influx of some 3,000 Afghan refugees
into Pakistan every day in just this section of the border, and with
defeated Taliban fighters sneaking out of Afghanistan, President Pervez
Musharraf ordered more troops to the border zone.

Despite the show of force, refugees continued to slip into Pakistan through
smugglers' paths in the mountains. Many of the refugees are difficult to
detect, and move in with relatives in the sprawling refugee camps around
Peshawar. U.N. refugee officials have taken to calling them "the invisible
refugees" because they don't register with either the United Nations or the
Pakistani government.

The government has begun to entice Afghans out of the crowded refugee
neighborhoods and into 11 camps it constructed closer to the border. NCA has
helped provide water and sanitation for four of the new camps, each designed
to hold 10,000 people.
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*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).

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United Methodist News Service
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