Focus on humanitarian situation

Aid agencies in the region are persevering in their race against time to provide Afghans both inside and outside the country with urgent humanitarian relief before winter sets in. In an effort to shore up Central Asian cooperation, in his second visit to the region within one month UN Emergency Relief Coordinator Kenzo Oshima has visited Turkmenistan, the first of three Central Asian Republics on his schedule. Experts say the republics will become key staging grounds for increased aid and future rehabilitation assistance once fighting ends in northern Afghanistan. Following a meeting with Turkmen President Saparmyrat Niyazov, UN sources confirmed on Tuesday that several steps had been taken to facilitate the delivery of aid to Afghanistan, including the setting up of two humanitarian offices respectively in Ata-Murad (36.12N 62.59E) and Imam-Nazar (37.15N 65.05E), in the south of the country. Oshima said these agreements were critical as the situation for millions of people inside Afghanistan was becoming more desperate by the day. Food deliveries Meanwhile, food deliveries were under way with the help of commercial drivers despite the US-led air strikes and reports of deteriorating law and order inside the country. Heather Hill, the spokeswoman for the UN World Food Programme (WFP) in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, told IRIN that 1,200 mt a day was being delivered daily by truck convoys from pre-positioned stocks in Iran, Pakistan, Turkmenistan and Tajikistan. Daily deliveries were increasing in quantity to reach the daily 1,600 mt target, with 52,000 mt per month of food aid required for six million vulnerable people inside the country, she said. "Our information is that we are still able to keep working in the current circumstances. We have not reached the point where we are resorting to airlifts," Hill said. Airdrops would only take place if food could not be taken in by road. "So far, nothing has been planned in terms of airdrops. At this point, we are concerned with getting enough food in by truck," she said. Asked if insecurity was delaying the relief effort inside the country, Hill said the extent of the onward delivery to Afghans depended on local implementing partners in the various regions. However, there were no reports of WFP national staff being harassed, she said. "You have to remember that drivers in Pakistan and Iran have been working in war conditions for the last 20 years. They're experienced in this work, and if they're willing to work with us, we carry on," Hill said, adding that WFP operations were working flat out. "We are racing against time." The WFP spokewoman said it was snowing in the high altitude Anjuman Pass, the only access route to civilians in the Northern Alliance-held Panjshir Valley, north of Kabul, eastern Afghanistan. The UN food agency had reached an agreement with the Kyrgyz and Tajik authorities to keep the supply route into northern Badakhshan cleared of snow, she said, adding that 16 snowploughs were being purchased for this purpose. In addition, convoys of trucks were travelling daily from Kabul into the central highlands and being handed over to Oxfam for onward distribution. The head of Save the Children-US (SC-US) for Afghanistan, Andrew Wilder, told IRIN that food was now being delivered in large quantities, although there remained the main challenge of reaching the more isolated parts of Afghanistan, such as the central highlands. Although it was urgent to get food to these areas before the onset of winter, Wilder said there was no absolute deadline for much of the region. "There's this deadline assumption, after which people think it won't be possible to deliver food. The reality is that you will be able to reach some parts of the central highlands region, but not all. In some areas there will be the possibility of providing aid through the winter months," Wilder said. He said he was optimistic about providing sufficient aid to 400,000 people in the northern province of Faryab. In order to minimise the risk of looting, SC-US, Acted and WFP had agreed that relief trucks would now travel directly to delivery points in the affected areas. Security conditions It was hoped that a decree issued on 18 October by the Taliban leader, Mullah Mohammad Omar, would serve to end the spate of lootings and occupations of agency compounds. A UN official said on Tuesday that the Taliban had immediately left the UNOCHA office in Mazar-e Sharif on receipt of a copy of the decree. Shortly afterwards, agencies were able to recover vehicles and, in some areas, the use of radio communications for relief operations was reinstated, albeit under Taliban surveillance. Aid workers told IRIN on Tuesday that Mazar-e Sharif was relatively stable, although with fighting nearby this could change. Reports of a breakdown of discipline in Taliban ranks in the city was alarming, although it was thought that this could be military elements taking useful assets such as vehicles. Meanwhile, increased military activity near Kabul and Kandahar has led to deteriorating conditions, with large numbers of people relocating or fleeing for asylum. Stephanie Bunker, spokeswoman for the UN Humanitarian Coordinator for Afghanistan, told reporters on Tuesday that several bombs had hit residential areas in Kabul, after Taliban elements had moved into these districts. A Shi'ah of Hazara ethnic origin, Mohammad Gholam (name changed), confirmed that residential districts in Kabul had been hit by bombs, injuring civilians and prompting local people to question the purpose of the US-led strikes. Having returned from Kabul to Pakistan on 20 October, Gholam told IRIN that conditions inside the country were chaotic. Already a refugee in Pakistan, Gholam had travelled to Kabul to attend a family wedding days before the 11 September attacks, and was subsequently held up in the country for six weeks. Gholam said food prices in Kabul had plummeted following the strikes, the result of an influx of food aid into the markets, and panic selling by Afghans wishing to flee to Pakistan. People were selling what they could not carry at very low prices, he said. Civilians fleeing In western Afghanistan, aid workers were concerned that fresh displacements were taking place before winter, and that mortality rates from exposure could rise sharply. In Herat, over 50,000 people were reported to be without proper shelter, according to a survey conducted by the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) in early October. Bunker noted that last winter 150 people, including children, had died of cold in camps for internally displaced persons in Herat. Meanwhile, aid agencies have been scaling up activities to deal with the influx of refugees into the southern Pakistani province of Baluchistan. Afghans told aid workers on the border that they were fleeing bombing, but also the chaos expected after the bombing ended. More than 13,000 people crossed the border last week, with an estimated 15,000 gathered there since 21 October. With the border officially closed, Afghans were scaling the nearby Khojak hills to enter Pakistan. The UNHCR spokesman, Peter Kessler, told reporters that UNHCR and partners had prepared a temporary staging site near the Chaman border to provide the most vulnerable refugees entering the country with urgent care and medical attention. Work, disrupted by insecurity in the border areas, was continuing to provide long-term facilities for 50,000 new arrivals, some 20 km away. Kessler said Afghans were now fleeing their homeland by the day. "But they are finding borders closed, forcing them to wait, or hunt for passages to safety and the humanitarian assistance that is their right," he said. In a press release on Wednesday, the refugee agency said it had received less than two-thirds of the funds required for its response to the Afghan crisis. US $31 million to date meant that the operation was proceeding "hand to mouth", it said.