Floods expected following harsh winter

Following the harshest winter Afghanistan has seen in a decade, the risk of flooding remains high in some parts of the country as temperatures improve and snows begin to melt in mountainous areas, according to aid organisations in the Afghan capital Kabul. In western Badghis province, reports indicated that early flooding in the Jauwand, Gardes and Murghab districts had forced some families to leave their houses in Panjab, Manoel de Almeida e Silva, a spokesman for United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA), said on Thursday in Kabul. "A joint UN mission bringing together a number of UN agencies was deployed to Badghis province to look at the situation on the ground and provide technical support to the provisional task force," the spokesman said, adding that the team’s initial assessment would be available later on Thursday. According to UNAMA, with spring fast approaching, potential floods affecting the country remained a source of concern. "This country has had to deal with floods in the past, but this year, with much greater snow falling, the risks are greater," he said earlier. That sentiment was shared by Afghans on the streets of the capital. "Our country was affected by severe drought over the past few years and there hadn’t been too much snow. But this winter was very harsh with heavy snow and when all that snow starts to melt many people could be in trouble," Masoud, 21, a resident of Kabul, told IRIN, pointing to the snowy peaks of high mountains surrounding the city. In the capital, more than 85 Kabul municipality workers - supported by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and UNAMA – were now working on cleaning and deepening the Kabul river bed to prevent the river from bursting its banks due to anticipated high waters. Efforts from various bodies to mitigate the flood risk are also now under way. In the western province of Herat, a regional flood contingency plan has been endorsed by the combined disaster management team, chaired by the country's deputy minister of rural rehabilitation and development. Also, joint missions, including government agencies and UN bodies have been deployed to some western provinces to assess the level of disaster preparedness there. More than 100 NGOs in the region took part in an emergency meeting on Wednesday to discuss the situation there while identifying the role that they could play in the disaster risk mitigation effort. "In [the northern] Balkh province, assessment teams have been deployed to all districts to make flood-vulnerability assessments. The teams are comprised of government personnel, NGO and UN staff," Almeida e Silva explained. "In the central highlands area, a provisional task force on flood preparedness is being established in Bamian and focal points in each district of the province are also in the process of being identified," he added. In some provinces, special task groups had been established while in others single disaster response committees were in place. At the national level, a joint operations centre, bringing together a broad spectrum of humanitarian actors – government, the Coalition, the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), the UN and others – was being established at UNAMA with real time information. Plagued by conflict for more than 20 years, Afghanistan is prone to various natural disasters, including earthquakes, avalanches, floods and landslides. Flooding and mudslides are common, particularly in the spring when snow starts melting. It is estimated that natural disasters have killed more than 19,000 people and affected about 7.5 million Afghans since the early 1980s, according to a recent report by UNEP.