Russia joins Afghan refugee relief effort

Tajik officials maintain that a massive influx of Afghan refugees into Tajikistan could serve to destabilise this already impoverished country, where over one million people remain reliant on international food aid in the wake of a three-year drought. The officials hope that international aid, including Russian consignments which have recently arrived in Tajikistan, bound for distribution within Afghanistan, may discourage refugee movements north into Tajikistan. The deputy secretary of the Tajik Security Council, Nuralisho Nazarov, told IRIN on Friday that even admitting those Afghan refugees now concentrated on or near the Tajik border would be tantamount to "social and economic suicide for Tajikistan". With the UN estimating that up to 1.5 million Afghans could flee if US strikes went ahead, the fear among officials is that many of the refugees will head for Northern Alliance-held areas bordering Tajikistan. However, other local analysts disagree. Although US strikes would exacerbate the sociopolitical situation in Tajikistan, they maintain that the vast majority of Afghan refugees will head for Pakistan and Iran, as has traditionally been the case in the past. Confirming this, the spokesman at the opposition Afghan embassy in Dushanbe, Oryonfard Shamsulhaq, told IRIN that most of the displaced, many whom had left homes in Kabul and Kandahar, were moving towards the borders with Iran and Pakistan. Russia has joined efforts to increase international assistance within Afghanistan. According to Maksim Peshkov, the Russian ambassador in Tajikistan, 80 mt of humanitarian aid, including tents, medicines and food, has arrived in the Tajik capital, Dushanbe. In addition, a special train carrying medicines, diesel generators, field hospitals and field kitchens is on its way from Russia. Peshkov said the supplies would be handed over to representatives of the Northern Alliance, who would take charge of distributing the aid among the displaced in the northern provinces of Takhar, Badakshan and the Panjshir Valley. He told IRIN he did not expect a humanitarian disaster in Afghanistan. Meanwhile, international humanitarian organisations continue to supply emergency aid to displaced people in northern Afghanistan, including 10,000 camped on islands in the Pyandzh river on the Tajik border. The UN Humanitarian Affairs Officer in Dushanbe, Valentin Gatzinski, told IRIN that agencies were "stocking the necessary quantity of humanitarian aid enough for both urgent and long-term humanitarian operations".