Heavy floods affect 2,000 people in the north

The effects of heavy rains on Sunday have caused serious flooding in northern Afghanistan, affecting thousands of people and destroying hundreds of homes.

"Eleven people have been killed and over 2,000 people were affected," Manoel de Almeida el Silva, a spokesman for the UN Assistance Mission for Afghanistan (UNAMA) told IRIN in the capital Kabul on Thursday.

The flood happened on Sunday in Konduz province, damaging 474 houses, while completely destroying 168. The flood seriously impacted Khanabad district, but also affected the surrounding districts of Chahar Darreh, Dasht-e Archi and Aliabad.

According to the United Nations, food and nonfood related items, including tents, plastic sheets, blankets, family kits, hygiene kits, baby blankets have been distributed to the flood hit-families so far. "An emergency group was formed in Konduz in order to provide continuous immediate response to this emergency," the spokesman said, explaining that the group was composed of civil and military authorities of the region, as well as representatives of the Afghan Ministry of Rural Rehabilitation and Development, NGOs, UN agencies and UNAMA.

UNAMA also reported heavy rainfalls in the northern province of Mazar-e-Sharif. "On 25 March four teams composed of the UN, UNAMA, NGOs and the Government carried out an assessment and assisted 325 affected families in Mazar city," el Silva said, adding that the assessment teams were also going to the villages outside of Mazar city to assess damage that might have occurred.

The rainfall completely destroyed eleven compounds of the agriculture department, and according to UNAMA, the World Food Programme (WFP) was supporting an immediate clean up effort of the those facilities under its food-for-work programme.

Northern Afghanistan has witnessed many serious natural disasters, mainly earthquakes, floods and landslides, over past few years. Despite clear signs of predictable natural disasters, however, there remains no viable focal point to make fundamental steps towards disaster preparedness and emergency response.

The government's Kabul-based, Disaster Preparedness Department (DPD), the country's only natural disaster response authority, claims to have no professional, technical and logistical capability for emergencies. At present, the DPD has sub offices in most of the provinces and is the only government organ to respond to disasters.

"We have started restructuring from zero," Qazi Tajudin , the head of the department, told IRIN, arguing his department was neglected by both the government and aid agencies. "We are taking very initial steps in training emergency response and disaster preparedness teams for the whole country," he said, despite the fact there had been no allocated budget for emergency response, nor stock piled relief items for cases like Konduz.

Meanwhile, the UN spokesman said he was optimistic about the government's capacity to respond to natural disasters. "I think the speed in which the actors could take action in response to the emergency was very important," he said, highlighting the government's coordination with UN, NGOs and local civilians was a good indication of the government's ongoing capacity building.