Agencies struggle to reach needy

Afghan refugee children play in the dust while their families wait for tent allocation at the Makaki refugee camp, 2km from the Iranian border. PHOTO: AP

Aid agencies are now finding it too dangerous to operate in many of the areas where Afghans are most at risk of starvation, as law and order breaks down and communications are cut.

Although the World Food Program (WFP) has managed to increase the flow of food into Afghanistan in the last few days, the prospects for the winter are looking increasingly bleak, Lindsey Davies, a WFP spokeswoman in Islamabad, said.

The WFP is now delivering 2,000 tonnes of food a week into the country. But UN agencies warned five weeks ago that up to 7.5 million Afghans would need to receive aid before mid-November to survive the winter and 50,000 tonnes a month would have to be delivered.

A meter of snow has already fallen in the Anjuman pass, the only northern route to those in need in the Panjsheer valley, and snow or freezing rain has fallen in the mountains around Kabul and in districts of the drought-stricken Faryab province.

At least 700,000 people face starvation in areas which could be cut off by snow any day now -- Hazajarat in the the central highlands, the north-east and the Panjsheer. The WFP says it needs to deliver 39,000 tonnes of food to these people before the passes become inaccessible. But in the last 10 days it has only managed to get 8,000 tonnes to these areas.

"We are doing cartwheels and somersaults to work out ways round it," Davies said.

Emergency plans include airlifting in 50 Swedish trucks with snow blades and snowploughs in the hope of keeping the Anjuman pass open for a couple of weeks longer. The WFP has also employed an arctic environment specialist who will try to set up a logistics base camp on the pass to keep supplies moving to local truckers.

Other aid sources said that the Taliban had clamped down on communications, making it impossible to say with any accuracy whether food was still being distributed beyond the main warehouses.

The WFP said that its ware-houses, vehicles and communications equipment had been seized in some areas, and that there were unconfirmed reports that 1,600 tonnes of its food supplies had gone missing in the last few days. It had also received reports of non-governmental organizations' staff being attacked and harassed.

Security on the ground was now too bad for NGOs to operate in the provinces of Badghis, Ghor, Baghlan, Balkh and Faryab. An estimated 500,000 people in these areas have been hit by three years of drought as well as fighting. They will run out of food by the end of December. They are also likely to be cut off by snow in a few weeks.

The WFP says they need 27,000 tonnes of food for the winter but admitted it could not reach them in present circumstances. "It is a grave concern," said Davies.

An Oxfam spokesman, Matt Grainger, confirmed that it was now too dangerous to work in some parts of the north-west. There have been reports in the last couple of weeks of people dying of diarrheal disease related to malnutrition, but an assessment of the extent of the crisis is no longer possible.

"Afghanistan is now an information black hole and there is very little scientific data coming out," Grainger said. "It is impossible to update three-month-old figures because no one has safe access. Any claims that the humanitarian situation is somehow under control are a dangerous distortion. But we know hundreds of thousands of people are already cut off because of the Taliban, moving frontlines, bombing and marauding militia, never mind the winter."

Save the Children's field director in Islamabad, Andrew Wilder, also said it was no longer possible to get accurate figures from inside the country and that the operating environment was deteriorating rapidly.

"One of our many concerns is that the bombing should not be expanded to target assets that we need to deliver aid. Attacking a non-existent industrial base, or electricity facilities in Kandahar for example, will lead to a direct deterioration in water supplies and sanitation, and that hurts women and children."

In recognition of the fact that time has already begun to run out for the humanitarian effort, the WFP has been looking at the possibility of airdrops, previously dismissed by many agencies as impractical.

"If all else fails we are planning airdrops, but they will depend on the US providing a safe air corridor, on guarantees of safety on the ground." Davies said. "It needs a logistical miracle."