WFP says famine threat receding

The World Food Programme (WFP) said on Wednesday that the threat of famine appeared to be ending in most of Afghanistan by virtue of a record 116,000 mt of wheat having been sent into the country in December. "It certainly looks like we have averted a widespread famine in Afghanistan," a WFP spokesman, Jordan Dey, told IRIN. "But we are still concerned about pockets of people... in small villages and in hard-to-reach areas." Earlier, however, after more than 20 years of war, the worst drought in living memory - in its third year now - and a military campaign against the Taliban, the spectre of a severe famine in Afghanistan had grown significantly. Several aid workers had reported in the past few months that some Afghans had been in such dire straits as to be reduced to eating grass. Then, between 1 October and 31 December, the WFP sent in 200,000 mt of food, far exceeding its target of 165,000 mt needed to feed about six million impoverished Afghans. "This record level - reached against the backdrop of looted warehouses and destroyed offices, ripped up phone lines and trashed computers, stolen trucks, treacherous roads, snowed-in communities, inter-factional fighting, and active militias - will cover the food needs of six million Afghans for two months," Dey told a news briefing on Monday. He said a lot of credit for the success achieved was due to the Afghan local staff who had carried out their duties following the evacuation from the country of all international staff and other aid workers after the 11 September attacks on the US. Subsequently, after the rout of the Taliban by the US-led coalition, international staff began returning and, according to Dey, there are now 27 core international WFP staff members back at work there, assisted by another 22 international staff members engaged in maintaining roads to keep them clear for food transportation. Dey described the agency’s Afghanistan effort "one of the largest, most complicated and most dangerous food aid programmes ever carried out by WFP in its nearly 40 years of existence". Despite these accomplishments, however, numerous challenges still lay ahead. "The overall security environment must be improved in Afghanistan; the humanitarian community still needs access to Kandahar [the former stronghold of the Taliban], mines and UXOs [unexploded ordnance] still pose a threat to WFP staff and trucks," he added at the regular news briefing. Other nongovernmental organisations have warned that there is an urgent need to diversify the food supplies, particularly in the northwest of the country, where commercial supplies are insufficient, or the families are too poor to buy food. Dey said most of the food sent by WFP to Afghanistan was in the form of wheat, although supplementary food - comprising cooking oil, sugar and lentils - for children under five was also being handed out to the needy. WFP was also providing porridge for sick and elderly people.