29 Nov. - 5 Dec. 2001
Issue No.562
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 29 Nov. - 5 Dec. 2001 Issue No.562 |
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A race against time
Though US bombing has abated in Afghanistan, opposition forces are creating sufficient havoc to hinder the distribution of food, writes Faiza Rady
After six weeks of relentless B-52 sorties in Afghanistan, the US finally allowed a lull in the bombing -- except, of course, the Taliban strongholds of Kandahar in the south and Kunduz in the north, which were still being heavily pounded with thousands of the latest hi-tech explosives. The rest of the country, at least for the time being, has been spared.
The decrease in bombing has given a glimmer of hope to the estimated 7.5 million Afghans threatened with imminent starvation, who are desperately waiting for food aid. The aid is on its way, but as usual, there are complications. On Friday, the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) airlifted a cargo of food supplies from neighbouring Tajikistan into north- east Afghanistan -- the first such delivery since the 11 September attacks. Encouraged by its first successful airlift, the WFP plans to organise four daily flights to the region to distribute emergency food supplies to some 300,000 people living in remote mountain villages.
In Afghanistan's north-eastern region, villagers are especially at risk since the country's harsh winter snows make roads and mountain paths impassable. The WFP and other aid agencies are racing against time to supply four-month rations of wheat flour to the north-eastern town of Faizabad and distribute them to its hinterland settlements. On Saturday, a convoy of 47 trucks, also carrying WFP food and medical supplies, reached Kabul from Peshawar in northern Pakistan. The journey to Kabul was anything but smooth sailing, however, as a number of drivers were robbed of their personal belongings by marauding gangs of bandits. The WFP also confirmed that poor security conditions are considerably hindering food deliveries throughout the country.
Instances of thuggery abound. On 20 November, an aid truck was hijacked on the Kabul-Bamiyan road, and although the UN received assurances about the safety of their operations in the north-eastern Mazar-i-Sharif region, the agency's offices were looted both before and after Mazar surrendered to the US-backed Northern Alliance (NA).
An unpredictable coalition of dubious warlords, the future "broad-based" government of Afghanistan, is even more feared and hated than the Taliban in some areas. The Afghan people have not forgotten the NA's murderous record, which saw the capital Kabul destroyed and left more than 50,000 dead during the rule of former President Burhanuddin Rabbani from 1992 to 1996. "If until yesterday the US and its allies were supporting the policies of Osama-fostering and Taliban- fostering (during the Soviet occupation) today they are sharpening the dagger of the Northern Alliance," said the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA), a highly respected underground opposition group. "Because of this policy, the US have plunged our people into a horrific fear of re-experiencing the dreadful happenings of the years of the Jihadis' emirate," RAWA claimed.
Despite the Taliban's imminent defeat and quasi-surrender, acts of vandalism, looting and summary executions in territories regained by the Northern Alliance are still going strong in and around scattered pockets of the country, the British-based aid agency Oxfam reported. Truckers are still wary about hazarding into uncharted territory, and aid routes have been turned upside down. Three-quarters of the trucking routes into Afghanistan are currently suspended.
"Six weeks of US bombing has sharply exacerbated what was already a dire situation," notes political analyst Seumas Milne in the Pakistani English-language daily Dawn. Milne points to Oxfam's warning that the group is operating "on a precipice."
Reports from the west and north-west of the country suggest that increasing lawlessness is making it very difficult to get food to the people who need it. As a result of conditions of extreme deprivation, compounded by the collapse of the country's government and the US-sponsored empowerment of the Northern Alliance forces and all their attendant gangs, the law of the jungle prevails. UN deputy coordinator for Afghanistan Antonio Donini described the humanitarian situation in northern Afghanistan as "a crisis of stunning proportions."
Oxfam and other aid agencies reiterated their long-standing demand that neighbouring countries promptly and unconditionally open up their borders to accommodate Afghan refugees. Neighbouring Pakistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan had, in fact, complied with US orders to close their borders to any influx of refugees fleeing the bombing -- a flagrant violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention's statute on the protection of refugees. "States in the region must honour their obligations under the refugee convention and ensure that those seeking refuge from Afghanistan are allowed to enter their borders," warned Save the Children's director- general, Mike Aaronson.
To ensure the opening of access routes and provide adequate security for food delivery and distribution, Oxfam is calling for the immediate intervention and deployment of UN peace- keeping forces in Afghanistan. Meanwhile people are dying in numbers no aid group can count.
In parts of Zabul, a southern province east of Kandahar, the starved population has resorted to eating crickets and grubs since August, reports Oxfam. In Jawand, people are dying of starvation, while survivors subsist on wild plants. But even this supply has by now been depleted.
Is Afghanistan facing a disastrous humanitarian crisis as a result of a US-led campaign against terrorism that amounts to the hunt for one man and his gang of cohorts? Dominic Nutt of Christian Aid believes that the dimension of the Afghan crisis may surpass any humanitarian disaster in recent history. Estimates of the potential human toll resulting from the bombing and the disruption of food supplies are harrowing. According to UN estimates, the lives of some 7.5 million people are dependent on the immediate distribution of emergency food supplies.
Last week, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan complained that the WFP has only been able to ship half of the food Afghans need. If this situation continues, the UN estimates that some 3.7 million Afghan lives are threatened with death before next spring. In the meantime, US President George W Bush and his Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld are pushing ahead with their pursuit of the elusive Bin Laden into the mountain caves of Afghanistan.
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