ICRC to step up humanitarian efforts

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, placing food and other emergency relief for destitute families in rural parts of the central highlands at the top. The move is expected to reduce the need for thousands to take refuge in displacement camps in search of assistance. "We have identified the central highlands as an area of particular need," an 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 said. Since mid-November, the ICRC had been doing its utmost to enable people to remain in their rural villages, he noted. According to an ICRC assessment earlier last year, there were in the central province of Ghowr - notably the country's least accessible province - about half a million people in need of assistance. Between mid-November and mid-December, the ICRC had succeeded in helping 112,000 of them. Although an assessment in the neighbouring Bamian Province was still in progress, some 26,000 people had been assisted there. Both provinces had been cut off from humanitarian assistance following the attacks on the US on 11 September and the withdrawal of international humanitarian aid staff from Afghanistan. "During our absence there was no contact", Kleiner said. ICRC was now trying to bring in 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 said 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 city 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 had been damaged or destroyed during the recent bombing campaign, the statement added. Regarding ICRC's other priorities, Kleiner said continuing visits to individuals captured during recent fighting remained a major concern. ICRC delegates had visited over 4,000 detainees in some 30 places of detention throughout the country, including 20 detainees being held by US forces at Kandahar airport. Friday's statement said the organisation had sought permission to visit - in accordance with its standard working procedures - all detainees held in connection with the conflict. Included in this framework was the possibility for delegates to discuss treatment and conditions of detention with the detainees in private. Once registered by the ICRC, detainees were given the opportunity to write personal messages to their relatives. After being inspected by the detaining authorities, these messages were dispatched through the Red Cross/Red Crescent network, the statement explained. The ICRC is also continuing to support a number of Afghan medical facilities with medical 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, the ICRC is continuing its endeavors to assist and rehabilitate victims of mines and other ordnance at its six limb-fitting centres across the country, while at the same time intensifying its mine-awareness programmes amongst the civilian population. Land mines continue to present a major problem. "Just yesterday we found a land mine in the middle of the road in Bamian, where ICRC trucks and cars have been passing since distributions began on 24 December," Kleiner said. Currently ICRC has about 85 international and more than 1,000 local staff working inside the Afghanistan.