Special report on government winterisation efforts

With the onset of winter just weeks away, efforts to safeguard the lives of millions of vulnerable Afghans are now under way. Working with the United Nations Assistance Mission for Afghanistan (UNAMA), the Afghan government, in collaboration with UN agencies and NGOs, is leading the winterisation campaign - in what could prove its greatest challenge yet. "The government has the leadership in coordinating the efforts, along with key UN agencies and relevant ministries," Minister of Rural Rehabilitation and Development (MRRD) Hanif Atmar, who has been tasked to lead the winterisation effort, told IRIN in the capital, Kabul. He explained that his ministry was examining five major areas of concern: access, food aid, population movement and the plight of the nomadic Kuchis and the urban poor. Topping the list is access and the ability to move vast amounts of humanitarian assistance into areas of the country rendered inaccessible by heavy snows or cold. "Approximately two million people live in those parts of the country," Atmar explained, adding that the primary areas of concern were the central highlands, the northwest - for example Badghis and Ghowr provinces - and the northeast. His concerns were shared by Minister of Reconstruction Dr Amin Farhang. "We need to keep the roads clear during the winter months to ensure efficient and effective supply routes," he told IRIN. "As part of this programme, we have US $44 million worth of work [to do] just to keep the roads open and provide non-food related items to people in need. Once the roads are blocked, these people will be inaccessible and they will die without our help," he warned. According to Atmar, 120 roads have been identified as needing to be repaired and kept open during the winter. Such routes will be used primarily for humanitarian supplies, as well as general transport for the public, thereby ensuring continuing mobility within the country. "We are doing well on this. Over 70 percent of these needs have already been met," he said. Physically repairing the roads and keeping them accessible would be mainstay of the government's intervention, he observed, adding that there was wide community participation in this process, as well as with UN, NGO and government departments - at both the national and provincial levels. He noted, however, that particular attention still needed to be paid to the Russian-built Salang tunnel - a vital humanitarian lifeline between the northern and southern halves of the country. As for food, Atmar stated that about four million people would be in need of food assistance this winter, and that efforts were now under way to pre-position food in the areas deemed most vulnerable. According to Alejandro Chicheri, a spokesman for the World Food Programme (WFP), much more is needed on this front. "Please bear in mind that the emergency operation still faces a shortfall of food worth approximately US $62.1 million, or 22.1 percent of the total requirements," he told IRIN. "This shortfall means that we face a shortage of food, and pipeline breaks during the last quarter of the year." WFP is planning to pre-position 51,000 mt of food before winter sets in, and has already moved some 8,000 mt from its warehouses in the western city of Herat, and the northern cities of Mazar-e Sharif and Feyzabad, as well as Kabul. Atmar separated the food issue into two parts. The first concerns the food needs of the vulnerable population, whose vulnerability will be exacerbated by the winter due to inaccessibility, and who number about two million. "We are OK with that. They will have food during the winter," he said. The second part comprises the generally vulnerable population living not just in areas susceptible to closure, but also in areas remaining open during the winter. "That situation is still not clear. We are waiting for the vulnerability analysis and mapping [VAM] results from WFP, which will be made available very soon," he said. Asked to elaborate, Atmar said these people were those affected by the drought, the extremely food insecure, returning internally displaced persons (IDPs), refugees, and school-children, as well as the malnourished population in general - both in cities and rural areas. Also noteworthy is the fact that of the 1.7 million refugees who have come home since the demise of the Taliban last year, most arrived with very little, and also only recently. "Their coping strategies have yet to be re-established," one aid worker told IRIN. Just recently, for example, World Vision said that in Badghis Province alone, roughly 50 percent of the population - or about 400,000 people - could not obtain enough food. According to the international NGO, it was not uncommon for people to travel up to three days by foot or donkey to regional centres such as Qaleh-ye Now and Chahartaq, where they had at least limited access to food, basic medical care, education and other necessities. "In winter, snow, ice and bitter wind and cold will make the steep, narrow paths they rely on too treacherous for travel. For four and a half months, their access to the outside world - like the surrounding landscape - will be frozen," the group said. As for the preliminary findings of the VAM countrywide assessment, there has been a considerable improvement in food production, particularly in the north and west of the country. The main area of concern embraces the provinces of Oruzgan and Bamian in the central region and Vardak in the northeast, where the drought continues to have a negative impact on food security and livelihoods. Minimal rainfall and a depleted water table have resulted in a water-shortage crisis in these provinces. Commenting on the situation, Chicheri said the provinces in the northeast of the country would have districts that were both surplus and deficit areas, with certain communities and areas at both the district and subdistrict levels facing acute rates of food insecurity. The central highlands and the northwestern provinces of Ghowr, Sar-e Pol and Faryab, and Farah in the southwest, were continuing to experience high levels of food insecurity, but with an overall improvement from last year, he explained. In spite of a trend towards recovery and an overall improvement in production, however, Chicheri emphasised that three years of drought had had a severe impact on the rural population, resulting in the depletion of livestock and assets, accumulation of debt, and general undermining of the productive capacity of entire communities. "Although there is greater food availability this year, a considerable portion of the population will be unable to access a sufficient amount of food to meet their basic requirements," he warned. In fact, based on the latest population figures released by the UN's Afghanistan Information Management Service (AIMS), four million people in rural areas will face a food deficit during the next 12 months; however, this figure does not include the urban vulnerable, returning refugees and IDPs. Another area being addressed by the MRRD is the movement of returning IDPs and refugees. "We already have 1.7 million refugees that have returned during the year to different parts of the country. On top of that, there are over one million IDPs in different regions of the country, some of whom will be returning to their places of origin," Atmar said. Of both categories, according to an assessment by office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and its partners, just over half a million people would be in need of assistance during the winter, particularly in the areas of shelter, food, water, health care and non-food related assistance, he added. In this area, however, there remains a significant shortfall of non-food items - primarily in the area of shelter. In addition to fuel, stoves, clothing and blankets, there was a large shortfall of winterised tents - about 70 percent, Barmak Pazhway, a policy adviser to the MRRD, explained. But it is the Kuchi nomads, numbering about 1.5 million, who are of particular concern. "Over 50 percent of them are extremely vulnerable, and among them between 80 and 90 percent have lost their livestock - this being their primary [source of] livelihood," Atmar said, adding that the needs of this group were quite diverse, including access to pasture, shelter, food, restocking of livestock, and health care. "We are assisting in terms of assessment and programming with WFP and the Ministry of Tribal and Frontier Affairs, which is the lead ministry on the issue," he said. He noted that it was the situation this year that the interim government was most concerned about. While those Kuchis who had been displaced would be taken care of as part of the wider plan for returning refugees and IDPs in general, the Kuchis would also need various forms of assistance. "There isn't much happening for them at the moment," Atmar said. One of the key needs of this group is the supply of water in areas where they will settle during the winter. "We really don't know the scale of the needs," he noted, adding that at present there were no plans to assist them with water during the winter, but in an effort to prioritise the needs on the ground, the government was dispatching assessment missions to the areas. "One cannot really generalise here. They will settle in different parts of the country, so their needs are quite diverse," he maintained. "Largely we think the priorities will be around issues of shelter, food, water, health care, and livestock." Chicheri added that many Kuchis had been forced to adopt alternative livelihoods. A recent study has identified possible intervention strategies which could be applied to help these communities. "The results of this survey have [been] translated into a response from WFP, who have provided assistance to the Kuchi communities in several districts in Ghazni and Zabol," he said. The final winterisation area the MRRD is examining is the plight of urban population, particularly those they describe as vulnerable. The latter category, living in the major cities of Kabul, Mazar-e Sharif, Jalalabad, Kandahar and Herat, is estimated to number 360,000. Most of these cities - aside from Jalalabad and, to a certain extent, Kandahar - suffer from a dampness problem in the winter. "These vulnerable people do not have decent shelter. Our first priority is shelter, followed by food, health care and heating," Chicheri stressed. And while he noted a significant shortfall in all these areas, the minister conceded they were still working on calculating how many people they were talking about - a fact the UN readily admits as well. "It's all a big estimate," one UN aid official told IRIN. "You cannot actually establish these things very clearly - and you may be completely wrong - but it's a risk you have to take," he said. "You have to have a way to move forward and that's why we undertake such exercises." Indeed, it is the lack of clarity in identifying the actual needs on the ground that remains the key challenge in the weeks ahead. "You need to know how many people to prepare for, what's going to happen, your capacity, and what is appropriate to respond to," another UN official told IRIN. In an effort to assist the MRRD, UNAMA has tried to supply some statistics - a process that has involved requesting information from area coordination officers, who themselves have collaborated with provincial authorities. Indeed, there is probably no provincial authority which is unaware of the planning efforts, for these bodies - along with the UN agencies and NGOs on the ground - have the best information. Asked if he felt the winterisation effort was a major test for the government, Atmar said it was unfair to expect too much from the government at this stage. Relying on the main agencies that had the information and near monopoly of resources, he described the government's role as one of facilitation and coordination. "You can't expect the government to deliver, because it simply doesn't have the resources," he explained. He noted that donors were funding the UN and NGO community directly, adding that no one had given the government a large grant to handle the issues related to access to certain areas of the country. "Of course, we have some resources to repair and clear roads, but obviously this is not adequate," he said. He emphasised that the government's role was to make sure the agencies were coordinated, that they programmed their resources in a coordinated manner, and that they knew what the shortfalls were. Moreover, the government knew that these agencies, led by it, would approach the donors with the shortfalls. "What we are trying to do at this point is to bring these actors together, to push them and say, 'OK you have appealed to donors on behalf of the Afghans. Now we want you to deliver on what you have been promising to the nation and to the donors.'" Asked how the goverment's efforts were being received by the UN, Atmar noted that many of these agencies were not accustomed to being coordinated by the government. "There is a bit of resistance here and there, but we are working through that," he said.