Demarcation issue hampers humanitarian access

Efforts to assist thousands of Afghans stranded on an island in the Piang River along the Tajik-Afghan border, south of the Tajik city of Piang, are becoming increasingly difficult due to questions as to the exact demarcation of the border. “There are two groups of people living in this area, south of the Russian border forces line of control and yet north of the Piang River - an area of questionable territorial jurisdiction. At this point, we don’t know if they are in Afghanistan or Tajikistan, whether they are refugees or IDPs,” Ashley McAllen, medical coordinator for the NGO Merlin (Medical Emergency Relief International), told IRIN on Friday. The difficulty in determining the line of demarcation has made getting assistance to these people virtually impossible. “These people have been there for about two months and, due to their association with the Northern Alliance [military opposition to the Taliban Islamic movement], they have been cut off from their sources of supply in Afghanistan by the Taliban, which occupies the other side of the river,” McAllen said. Humanitarian sources told IRIN that there were an estimated 10,000 affected people in this area, and that their plight was not being adequately dealt with. Asked why response from NGOs had been slow in coming, the regional administrator for ACTED (Agency for Technical Cooperation and Development), Stephane Nicolas, told IRIN on Friday: “This is a complex problem: this is a kind of no man’s land and the situation is bad. They are continually being shelled by the Taliban and there were four causalities last week alone. Health, food and shelter are now a growing concern for the people there, particularly for the elderly and children affected.” While the UNHCR in Tajikistan said negotiations were taking place with Russian border forces and the Tajik Ministry of Foreign Affairs for access to this area, there was growing concern that, as winter fast approaches, the situation could worsen for thousands of families all along Afghanistan’s northeastern border with Tajikistan. While WFP has been able to provide food distribution for some of the families, their resources have been stretched to the limit, making it impossible to give them a full ration, according to UN sources. Agencies were attempting to get funding for food such as rice, oil and beans to complement wheat rations, but efforts in this regard had been unsuccessful so far and cases of malnutrition were appearing among some children, they added. All in all, there are an estimated 13,000 displaced Afghan families - or some 90,000 people - on the border with Tajikistan, who are desperately in need of assistance. Of these families, approximately 10,000 are from the northwestern province of Takhar, where escaped after heavy fighting between the Taliban and Northern Alliance forces this autumn, according to a UN official. Large swathes of this province - including schools, homes and entire villages - had been systematically burnt by the Taliban in an advance which had also brought the destruction of the displaced people’s livelihoods and food stocks, humanitarian sources told IRIN. To exacerbate these people’s plight, these same areas had been greatly affected by the nongoing Central Asia drought and much-reduced food production. With a severe winter approaching, an estimated 2,000 families are still living outside under temporary shelter or plastic.