UNHCR Turkmenistan ends humanitarian deliveries

The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has dispatched its last humanitarian consignment to Afghanistan via Turkmenistan. "This marks the end of a very successful cross-border humanitarian assistance programme," Ruven Menikdiwela, the agency's head of office in the Turkmen capital, Ashgabat, told IRIN on Friday. "We particularly want to thank the Turkmen authorities for making it the success that it was." According to the UNHCR official, following the initial downfall of the Taliban regime in December 2001, Turkmenistan, sharing a 744-km border with Afghanistan, proved an invaluable logistics hub in dispatching tonnes of much-needed food and non-food related assistance to the north of the country. Since October 2001, UNHCR Turkmenistan has dispatched some 500 mt of non-food related assistance through its southern border, including considerable quantities of tents, jerry cans, blankets, sleeping bags, cooking stoves and plastic sheeting destined for returning Afghan refugees. Asked why the programme was winding down, Menikdiwela remarked: "They are now getting most of their non-food related aid through Iran and Pakistan. We [UNHCR Turkmenistan] have become less significant an operation." The two trucks carrying UNHCR's last humanitarian shipment from Turkmenistan crossed the border on Sunday after a three-day delay at the border occasioned by security concerns in the north of Afghanistan. "The trucking company had been instructed not to proceed until the situation becomes much clearer," the UNHCR official said, adding that she expected the trucks to arrive in the northern Afghan city of Mazar-e Sharif within the next five days. UNHCR Turkmenistan continues to work with a number of refugee projects in the health sector, including the provision of medical kits and ambulances, the upgrading of medical clinics in rural areas, and reproductive health training for refugees and their peers. Of the estimated 14,000 refugees currently found in the Central Asian state, the vast majority are from Tajikistan, with some 1,000 ethnic Turkmen from Afghanistan.