Tuesday 25 September, 2001
Afghanistan: Food for thought
The UN World Food Programme (WFP) has announced that it will resume food aid shipments to northern and western Afghanistan for the first time since the attacks on New York and Washington.
But as aid agency representatives point out in Reporting Religion, this news comes not a moment too soon.
As much of the world’s media focuses on one story it seems strange to think that there are people who do not know about the World Trade Centre or the Pentagon attacks.
However Afghanistan's media is limited to four or five Taleban-run newspapers, a Taleban radio station, Radio Sharia, and a tiny television and radio station run by the opposition.
In areas run by the Taleban - about 90% of the country - television is banned entirely.
The majority of people living in Afghanistan have probably not seen images of the devastation visited on New York and Washington.
As Oliver Birch, a Christian Aid worker told BBC News Online recently:
‘They don’t even know who President George W Bush is – the atmosphere is one of bewilderment and confusion.’
Trade
As thousands of people flock to the Pakistan border area, the main concern for remaining Afghans is hunger.
For a long time, they have struggled to feed their families. Eighty-five per cent of the population are subsistence farmers but, for the past three years, Afghanistan has been in the grip of a drought and on the verge of mass starvation.
In the past, trade has been largely been with neighbouring Pakistan. Exporting Persian carpets, dried fruits and wool, as well as smuggled opium, electrical goods and more recently souvenir fragments of the giant Buddha statues destroyed by the Taleban.
However, the Taleban’s decision to curb poppy production and the closure of the borders around Afghanistan since the attacks on the US has severely hampered trade.
A letter smuggled out to the BBC, written by a trapped Afghan at the Pakistan border, describes how restrictions have meant that the limited supplies available are now being priced out of reach. He writes:
‘The prices of food and other materials such as fuel are getting higher and higher and have gone up by 10-15%…'
| 'At a time when starvation and droughts are threatening our people, the only hope our people have is the humanitarian assistance through NGOs and the UN.’ |
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Hunger
The UN has predicted that by November 2001, 5.5 million Afghans – about a quarter of the population – will be dependant on aid food supplies.
The World Food Programme have now agreed to resume shipments to those areas where security is relatively stable, local transport is available and aid workers are present on the ground to oversee distribution.
But as Dominic Nutt, a Christian Aid worker, recently told BBC Radio Four’sToday programme, the situation facing those left in Afghanistan is desperate. He said:
‘The threat of military action is holding a quarter of the population to ransom. There’s no food coming in, or very little. Farmers have found that their crops are down 90% - that’s for three years, not just this year.’
Chris Buckley, Christian Aid Programme Officer for Afghanistan, has also reported:
‘In a few weeks the winter snows will come, cutting off the hundreds of isolated villages whose only links to the outside world are rutted dirt tracks.'
| ‘Without seeds they will be unable to replant for next year. Without food aid now, thousands could be dead before the spring.’ |
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Water
Although the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights treats water as a component to basic rights, in Afghanistan people also face death from dehydration and dirty water supplies.
Alison Kelly, Head of Christian Aid’s Middle East, Eastern Europe and Central Asia team, says the agency is planning to return to Afghanistan as soon as possible, but in the meantime she is at pains to point out the situation facing the people in the western Afghan city of Herat, commenting:
| ‘Wells have dried up. Women have to walk a mile or more to get water, but the restrictions don’t allow them to go this far from home without their husband.’ |
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‘Even when they get to the well, often the water is contaminated. Children die from drinking it, after contracting diseases like cholera.’
Whilst aid agencies will welcome the news that the World Food Programme has withdrawn its suspension on deliveries, they continue to plead for the lives of the people of Afghanistan.
One aid agency’s website clearly states its position:
‘Christian Aid urges everyone involved to show civilised restraint in responding to an act of barbarism.’
‘Thousands of innocent people have died in the United States. We must now make sure that even more innocent lives are not now lost.’
|  |  | | | BBC World Service output |  |
| | In response to the latest crisis, BBC World Service has increased its broadcasts serving Afghanistan and the surrounding region.
Output in the key languages of the area - Arabic, Pashto, Persian and Urdu – has been expanded and transmissions on medium and shortwaves have also been reinforced.
For details of the extra broadcasts, please click here |
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