IRIN interview with WFP on crisis food needs

Following the terrorist attack on the US on 11 September, the borders with Afghanistan and its neighbours were closed, and all UN and NGO expatriate staff were relocated from the country. The UN's World Food Programme (WFP) halted food deliveries to depots inside Afghanistan. With mounting concern for millions of Afghans at risk inside the country, the agency has come under fire from some nongovernmental organisations, such as Oxfam, who say food aid deliveries must be restarted. WFP spokesman for Afghanistan, Khaled Mansour, spoke to IRIN on Monday about the current situation and WFP's contingency plans. QUESTION: WFP has been criticised for suspending its food deliveries to Afghanistan at a time when millions of Afghans need urgent food assistance. Can you tell us what is happening and why? ANSWER: Before I answer, let me say that the present situation is very serious. It was already grim before the events of 11 September [the terrorist attack on the US] and the new crisis started. We had people eating grass and animal fodder, and eating locusts. The most affected areas are in the north, where people cannot afford to buy food. As a result, we were planning to expand our operations to over 5.5 million people, come November - that is 25% of the entire population. We should be clear that WFP has not stopped its operations. We are continuing our programmes inside Afghanistan. What we have done is temporarily stopped moving food into Afghanistan. Since 11 September, we have distributed some 2,500 tonnes of food inside Afghanistan - and we still have about 14,000 mt of food stocks in our warehouses inside the country. That is enough for three weeks, if we had full normal operations, which we do not right now. WFP's policy is never to keep more than one month's stocks of food inside the country. We are also comfortable with the stocks of food we have around Afghanistan that can be deployed very quickly into the country. With these, we can access any part of Afghanistan within a few days. Q: Why did WFP stop food deliveries into Afghanistan? A: We stopped food shipments after the crisis started for two simple reasons: We needed local trucks to move food from our warehouses in Afghanistan into the rural areas and these have not been available, as all of the trucks were moving people out of Kabul and Kandahar. But this changes within days, if not hours, so on days when we have trucks - like yesterday in Kabul -we moved food to Ghazni. We have enough trucks in Herat, so we are moving food to the people we are working with. The same goes for some parts of Mazar-e Sharif. There is no point for us trucking in more than we would usually keep under the present circumstances - that is, stockpiling food but not being able to give it out to people. Secondly, we need to ensure - to a reasonable extent, under the circumstances - that the food will get to the people who are meant to receive it. We normally have strict rules and regulations about monitoring. These have been relaxed but we still need a minimum assurance that the food will get to the people who are supposed to receive it, people who need it the most. We have been monitoring the situation and developments very closely, and this decision to stop [sending in more food from outside] is a temporary decision which comes up for review every hour of the day. Once we have an opportunity to move food into the country, satisfying these two conditions to a reasonable extent - finding trucks, not dumping the food in the local warehouses; and ensuring to a reasonable extent that the food will get to the people who need it - then we will resume food shipments. Q: The British NGO Oxfam announced on Friday that it had trucked 1,500 mt of food aid from Uzbekistan into Afghanistan. Do you have anything to say about this? A: We are also still working every day. We are working mainly with the bakeries in Kabul and Mazar, assisting a little less than half a million people. We are still working with displaced people in camps in Herat and Mazar-e Sharif, and we are working with all other population groups that we can access. For example, yesterday, from our warehouse in Kabul, we sent 200 mt of food to Ghazni province and some to Logal through NGOs, including Oxfam. This was done through our local staff, who are on the ground in almost all our sub-offices, working with local NGO staff. We are still distributing food to anyplace to which we can get access. As I mentioned, we already have 14,000 mt of food inside Afghanistan; this is not the problem. It is getting this out to the people that remains difficult. That said, of course we are concerned that if the situation deteriorates further and we are unable to get food into the country for an extended period, then millions of people will face severe food shortages and there could be devastating consequences. However, there are sufficient stocks in the country and in the region for immediate needs. Q: How many local staff do you have inside Afghanistan, and how are you managing to talk to them now that the Taliban has stopped the use of radios and satellite phones? A: Under normal circumstances we had over 350 local staff in the country. That has been reduced to essential staff only. We still have contact with some of our staff - in fact more than 50 percent of them. The Taliban has sealed our communications rooms in some offices and we have been calling on them over the past couple of days to let our staff resume communications, as this is extremely important for the humanitarian operations, more than any time before. We need to resume proper contact with all of them, but this will not stop us from continuing our work. It will just make it more difficult. Here, I must stress that we have full trust in our local staff and say what a great job they are doing. They have families and they are working under very difficult circumstances but they are doing the best that they can. Under the present circumstances, many other people would have left. Q: Some people have said that WFP should just deliver the food inside Afghanistan and let the people take it. What do you say to this? A: How would you go about this? How would you know those who needed food the most would get it? Our experience of this shows that they would not, and the food probably would end up being sold or stockpiled. Moreover, you can't simply distribute food - or any other supplies - off the back of lorries to masses of people. This has been tried in Afghanistan and other countries where there have been food emergencies, and it can and does lead to tragedy, with the weakest being trampled underfoot in the crush to get the supplies. Q: Many thousands of people have already left their homes and headed for more remote areas or for the borders. How do you intend to reach those populations? A: We have deployed more staff in Peshawar [in North West Frontier Province, Pakistan] and in Quetta [in Baluchistan Province, southwestern Pakistan] and we are augmenting our operations in Tajikistan and Iran. As I mentioned, we already have enough stocks in the region. We have also received very positive signs from donors, including the US and European countries, of additional food aid. So we feel that we have almost all the pieces in place to provide food to the many thousands of people who may cross the borders in the coming few days, and to help those people inside Afghanistan if we can gain access to them. Q. There are grave concerns that the winter months will make the delivery of assistance impossible. Are you concerned about this? A: That is precisely why we decided to expand our programme to cover 25 percent of the population come November. There is mounting evidence that this winter will be worse than in previous years. In addition, the drought is in its third year this year, so what we are all concerned about is getting back to normal operations in Afghanistan. I hope this will happen before we get into winter, particularly by December. We are going to continue the present operation on the ground as long as we can, but we will need to go back to normal operations as soon as possible.