UN calls for humanitarian work to be stepped up

After the first night of US-led airstrikes against Afghanistan, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan has called attention to the dire plight of Afghan civilians and highlighted the crucial role played by the United Nations in provding aid to them. "The people of Afghanistan, who cannot be held responsible for the acts of the Taliban regime, are now in desperate need of aid," Annan said in New York on Monday. "The United Nations has long played a key role in providing humanitarian assistance to them, and it is my hope that we will be able to step up our humanitarian work as soon as possible." Annan's remarks were made in the wake of an attack on UN offices in the Pakistani city of Quetta on Monday. According to Eric Falt, the Director of the UN Information Centre in Islamabad, UNICEF's office in Quetta was set on fire causing "substantial damage" and UNHCR's office was stoned. Five UN vehicles were burned and damage was also caused at the office of the UN Special mission for Afghanistan (UNSMA) in Quetta. No staff were injured. At a press briefing in New York on Monday UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator Kenzo Oshima voiced his concern over the attacks on UN offices in Quetta and the constraints they imposed on the ability of humanitarian personnel to do their work. But he added that the UN would scale up its operations in Afghanistan "at the earliest opportunity" and do everything it could to support up to 7.5 million Afghan civilians with food, medicine and shelter. "We will concentrate on Internally Displaced Persons in camps in cities such as Herat, Mazar-I-Sharif and Kabul, and people threatened by starvation in rural areas," Oshima said. Oshima added that the intensification of hostilities made it necessary to remind the world of the need to protect innocent civilians, to distinguish between them and combatants, and to secure the necessary conditions to deliver aid. "To work we must have the the ability to communicate with our national staff, 700 of whom work inside Afghanistan," Oshima said. " We must have real guarantees of security and safety of both humanitarian staff and supplies, and have the permission of the Taliban to use our aircraft over the country." He added that donors had expressed their intention to provide over US$ 700 million for humanitarian needs in and around Afghanistan at a meeting in Geneva on Friday. WFP spokesperson Khaled Mansour said that the agency was curtailing its food deliveries into Afghanistan "for the time being, but movement of food inside the country still continues and stocks exist." Food was distributed on Monday in Kabul and a convoy of 14 trucks carrying 525 tonnes is scheduled to arrive in Herat in the west of the country before the end of the week. UNHCR said that it was not clear whether the air strikes had triggered new population movements. Some reports from Afghanistan spoke of more civilians fleeing the cities of Kabul, Jalalabad and Kandahar. But it was not known whether they were trying to find safety in surrounding villages or whether they were headed towards the borders. Meanwhile, UNHCR is continuing its efforts to get essential supplies in place and sites developed in neighbouring countries in the event of an Afghan refugee influx. "We are ready to provide shelter in tents and blankets for up to one million new arrivals," UNHCR spokesman Yusuf Hassan said in Islamabad on Monday. Some aid agencies have hit out at British and American attempts to combine humanitarian action with a military campaign by air dropping supplies of food and medicine to the Afghan people. "We understand the symbolism of food drops to show the people of Afghanistan that this is not a war against them," Oxfam's Director of Humanitarian Response Michael Delaney said on Monday, "but far more must urgently be done to save the tens of thousands of civilian lives threatened by starvation." Delaney added: "Humanitarian action must be as distinct from the military action as is at all possible...because both humanitarian aid and humanitarian workers will be at risk if they are not seen to be impartial." Medecins sans Frontieres (MSF) dismissed the air drops as a part of the military campaign to gather international approval of the US-led attacks. "Dropping a few cases of drugs and food in the middle of the night during air raids, without knowing who is going to collect them, is virtually useless - and may even be dangerous," MSF said in a statment. "What sense is there in shooting with one hand and distributing medicines with the other ? How will the Afghan population know in the future if an offer of humanitarian aid does not hide a military operation ?"