Maslakh demonstrates need for better monitoring

Maslakh camp for internally displaced persons (IDPs), the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) on Friday concluded its re-registration of some 100,000 IDPs at the windswept facility, 20 km west of Herat. The move followed an earlier registration of the population- taken during the time of the time of the Taliban – which put the figure at over 300,000, demonstrating that a stricter monitoring of humanitarian assistance was needed. "This was an inflated figure, and undoubtedly many people, including the Taliban, succeeded in cheating the aid community," the IOM chief for western Afghanistan, Rafael Robillard, told IRIN. "We must now concentrate on assisting those in real need at the camp, while not allowing it to become a magnet for others," he said, adding assisting people at their place of origin was now crucial. Deemed a huge success, the massive operation, supported by the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and other agencies, began on 10 February when some 400 IOM staff at 36 registration centres throughout the eight square-km camp fitted 100,000 people with wristbands in the course of the day. The following day, thousands of camp residents began to file through the registration centres to register and exchange their wristbands for one ration and distribution book per family. Describing the operation as "smooth and orderly", Robillard said registrars asked heads of families on the number of people in each family; their ethnic origin; their province, district and village of origin; how they had become displaced and when; the main source of income in their village; whether they were willing to go home; if so, when and under what conditions; and if not, why. Although results from the six-day operation have yet to be announced, according to preliminary findings, 60 percent of the people were from Badghis Province and 15 percent from Ghowr Province, both deeply affected by the drought. Additionally, a large group of people came from Herat Province itself. Regarding the IDPs' intention as regards return, five percent wanted to return immediately, 45 percent later, and 50 percent were unwilling to return. "This could have been due to the way the question was asked," Robillard said. The findings will be taken to the northeastern Iranian city of Mashhad for processing. Assisting in the operation were also some 700 troops deployed by governor of Herat, Isma'il Khan, to provide security and crowd control. The troops sealed the camp to discourage local people from registering to get access to international aid distributions, and many were turned away from military checkpoints. Despite an unrelated shooting incident between two soldiers on Thursday, leaving one dead, military cooperation was positive. By Friday afternoon, Robillard maintained that all original residents of Maslakh had been registered and any new arrivals had been directed to the nearby Shaidayee IDP facility, one of two other Herat camps managed by IOM, but previously closed to new arrivals. At Shaidayee, arrivals were provided with food, tents, blankets and other non-food items. Meanwhile, the findings are expected to confirm earlier suspicions that previous official estimates of Maslakh’s population were overstated by more than 100 percent, leaving aid workers in a quandary. "WFP [World Food Programme] was bringing in 90 mt of food aid a day, while the real need was only 40," one aid worker told IRIN. "Where did the other 50 mt go?" he asked. One victim of the oversight was Fazal Ahmad, a 30 year-old farmer from Chaghcharan, the provincial capital of western Ghowr Province. He told IRIN he had been in the camp for three months and had not received any assistance whatsoever. "I’ve had to beg from others to survive," the father-of-three said. "I hope after being registered I will receive something. I want to stay here. If I go back home I will die of hunger," he said. Such incidents point to a larger problem. Misappropriation of food aid under the Taliban appears to have been commonplace. The camp manager, Hubert Binon, told IRIN that on more than one occasion truckloads of food had been prevented from leaving the camp. "There is a definite need to change the distribution method being used," he said. "We have three or four steps in the distribution process, and we need to take away at least one of them. We need to distribute directly to the family itself, and with this new registration we should be able to do that," he added. Up to now, aid agencies have only been able to guess the number of IDPs in Maslakh. Abuse of the camp registration system under the Taliban, which resulted in multiple registrations and registration of some non-IDPs, put the official camp population at 324,000. At the same time, many people were not registered at all and received no assistance. The issue raises a challenge. While the international humanitarian community has proven generous in providing millions of dollars in aid to vulnerable Afghans, it must be equally generous in the care it takes to ensure its proper distribution. Otherwise, more people like Fazal Ahmad are liable to fall through the cracks.