IRIN interview with the United Nations Coordinator

While the world waits to see how the US will respond to the 11 September terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, there are growing concerns that reprisals against the prime suspect, Osama bin Laden, and the Taliban movement will have devastating consequences for the Afghan people - many of them already in dire need. The United Nations Coordinator for Afghanistan, Mike Sackett, spoke to IRIN in Pakistan on Thursday about these concerns and what is being done to assist the Afghan people. QUESTION: Afghanistan is one of the poorest countries on earth, with one of the world’s highest rates of infant mortality. How have the events of 11 September affected the country? ANSWER: On 4 September the United Nations humanitarian players put out a report entitled “The Deepening Crisis”. This was a plan of action for the winter period coming up. Essentially, what we felt was that there were more than 5 million people who were already severely affected by three years of drought and many years of fighting, and these people would have a difficult time surviving the upcoming winter without considerable assistance from the international community, including the UN humanitarian agencies. This assistance includes food distributions, provision of shelter assistance in camps for internally displaced people, and particularly assistance in what we call points of origin - putting food into villages to try to stabilise populations there and help them stay in their own homes. Now with the repercussions of the 11 September attacks on the US, with the withdrawal of all UN and NGO international staff and with the inability of many national staff to continue their duties as normal, almost all of those activities have come to a halt, and this places affected populations at an additional considerable level of risk. Q: How do the UN and NGOs plan to assist these people now that the borders and airspace have been closed? A: The current situation certainly means that the level of humanitarian assistance which is carrying on in Afghanistan is markedly reduced. We have instructed national staff to restrict their work to lifesaving activities, but there are quite a number of examples of where it is difficult even to continue with these activities. Here I must pay a special tribute to the courage of the Afghan national staff, who have been keeping our programmes going up until the present time and into the future. Many of them have faced difficult circumstances in the past, and I am sure they will be drawing on this experience to help them in the difficult times coming up, but indeed they are a very essential part of UN and NGO field presence. Q: Is the provision of assistance inside Afghanistan sustainable under the present circumstances? A: The situation in the foreseeable future, given the constraints that the UN has in delivering assistance inside Afghanistan, means that the main efforts will have to be assisting Afghans who have crossed neighbouring borders, in other words they have become refugees. Discussions are ongoing with the governments of neighbouring countries to facilitate their safe passage to places where they are in secure conditions and can receive the food, the shelter and the medical care that they need. Additionally we have established contingency plans for the future provision of aid, including the phase when the international humanitarian staff are able to go back into Afghanistan. Q: How soon do you think international aid workers can go back to Afghanistan? A: We hope that this situation is reached relatively quickly. We have to bear in mind that winter is fast approaching, and that winter in Afghanistan can be extremely harsh. If this phase is reached, i.e. our return to Afghanistan is in the middle of winter, then we will have additional problems to overcome, but the needs inside the country, in any case, will be very great. Q: If there are strikes against Bin Laden and the Taliban movement inside Afghanistan, there are fears that ordinary civilians will be most affected. How do you see this? A: One of the points we are stressing is that the affected innocent village people of Afghanistan are in no way connected with the conflict in Afghanistan, much less terrorism itself. These are village people, who due to circumstances totally beyond their control, now face great difficulty in continuing with their normal livelihoods. We believe that the situation is so serious for large numbers of people that we urge those drawing up strategic plans in Washington and Brussels to bear in mind the very real needs of Afghans in Afghanistan. Q: You are the Coordinator of all humanitarian assistance into Afghanistan. With all the different partners this must be an immense task. How is coordination achieved? A: Considerable efforts at present are going into coordinating the work of all the main players. These are the UN agencies and the NGOs. We are also in close contact with the Resident Coordinators of the United Nations system in the neighbouring countries. Following the withdrawal of all international UN staff and NGOs from Afghanistan last week, we established a Crisis Management Group in Islamabad to provide a central point for the management of the crisis in Afghanistan. Core membership includes my office, UNHCR, UNICEF and WFP. Other organisations, including ICRC and NGOs, have participated as well. One of the tasks of this group has been to develop a common strategy, and contingency plans. Q. Prior to events in the US, donors were showing signs of fatigue in funding programmes for Afghanistan. How have donors responded so far to the new situation facing Afghanistan and its neighbours? A: We have already had several contacts with donor partners. We have fully briefed them on the situation and are encouraged by some contributions which we have already had and also by their general willingness to receive our estimates of needs. These are needs in the near term to assist with refugees - these will be very considerable - and also in the longer term to begin to ameliorate the suffering inside Afghanistan. We also look forward to the day when the development and rehabilitation work can take place in that country.