ICRC to increase humanitarian effort

With access to vulnerable and isolated groups inside the country enhanced, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has established a clearer picture of the most pressing needs within Afghanistan and reviewed its operational priorities.

The agency has prioritised food and other emergency relief to destitute families in rural parts of the central highlands. The move is expected to reduce the flood of people currently fleeing to displacement camps in search of assistance.

"We have identified the central highlands as an area of particular need," ICRC spokesman, Michael Kleiner told IRIN on Monday from the Afghan capital Kabul. "They are surviving with local coping mechanisms, but due to destroyed shelter and cold, conditions are extremely harsh and the effects of three years of drought are also being felt," he explained. Since mid- November, ICRC was doing its utmost to allow people to remain in their rural villages, he noted.

According to an ICRC assessment earlier this year in the central province of Ghor - the country's least accessible province - there were approximately half a million people in need of assistance there. From mid-November to mid-December, ICRC succeeded in assisting 112,000 of them. Although an assessment in neighbouring Bamyan province remains ongoing, some 26,000 have been helped there.

Both provinces had been cut off from humanitarian assistance following the terrorist attacks on the US on 11 September. "During our absence there was no contact", he said. ICRC is now racing against the onset of winter to geti n as much assistance as possible, an effort overshadowed by the constant threat of snow blocking access to remote valleys.

In a statement on Friday, the relief group maintained that conditions had been cold but unusually dry for the season, allowing them to distribute supplies in mountain villages. But how long weather conditions would permit this was difficult to gauge. "It's really just a question of when the snow will start to fall," Kleiner said.

In the northern cities of Mazar-e Sharif and the Afghan capital Kabul, ICRC staff had also been assisting thousands of destitute residents along with displaced people and those whose homes were damaged or destroyed during the recent bombing campaign, the statement added.

Regarding ICRC's other priorities, Kleiner said continued visits to persons captured during recent fighting remained a major concern. ICRC delegates have visited over 4,000 detainees in some 30 places of detention throughout the country, including 20 being held by US forces at Kandahar airport. Friday's statement said the organisation had requested permission to visit, in accordance with its standard working procedures, all persons detained in connection with the conflict.

Included in this was the possibility for delegates to discuss treatment and conditions of detention with the detainees in private. Once registered, detainees are given the opportunity to write to friends or relatives. After being reviewed by the detaining authorities, these messages are dispatched through the Red Cross/Red Crescent network, the statement explained.

The committee is also continuing to support a number of Afghan medical facilities with supplies and blankets, plastic sheeting, food and fuel for generators. Water distribution systems and hand pumps are being repaired and maintained by ICRC engineers, thus making clean water available to a steadily growing number of Afghans.

Additionally, ICRC is continuing its endeavors to assist and rehabilitate victims of mines and other ordinance at its six limb-fitting centres across the country, while at the same time intensifying its mine awareness programmes amongst the civilian population.

This in a country where since 1988, ICRC has made 67,000 artificial limbs. Land mines continue to present a major problem inside the war-torn country. "Just yesterday we found a land mine in the middle of the road in Bamyan where ICRC trucks and cars have been passing since distributions began 24 December," he exclaimed. Currently ICRC has some 85 international staff and more than 1,000 local staff working inside Afghanistan.