IRIN Interview with Michael Semple, UN Regional Coordinating

Recent fighting has brought the remote Central Highlands region of Hazarajat under closer scrutiny. Michael Semple, the UN Regional Coordinating Officer for the area, told IRIN about the challenges facing some 2.5 million ethnic Hazaras, who are exposed to clashes between the Taliban and the local Hizbe-Wahdat militia [of Islamic holy warriors, or Mujahideen], as well as the effects of crippling drought. QUESTION: Severe drought has affected most of northern Afghanistan, including the Central Highlands. What is your view on the ability of the population to recover from its negative effects? ANSWER: The effect of the drought varies across the region but the rain-fed belt over the north of Hazarajat, where there was almost a complete failure of the rain-fed wheat crop, is the worst affected. Those parts of the region which depend mostly on that [rain-fed wheat] are hungriest. We've identified the northern districts, such as Dar-e-Suf, as being worst affected. We don't yet know the extent to which there will be a recovery in terms of planting. In some places they did manage autumn planting, in other places it was delayed. Rains came late autumn, so for low-altitude places with autumn planting, the rain came too late. In high-altitude areas, planting was on time. So we're waiting to see what happens with the spring. We'll really only know the extent of the recovery in May, after the spring planting has finished. Apart from the crop loss and the question of whether seed would be available, the loss of livestock has been significant and this will take longer for people to build up. Q: What's the total displacement in Hazarajat right now, as a result of conflict or drought? A: Our monitoring in autumn indicated that the total displacement in that period amounted to two percent [of the population]. These are people that we've verified and counted on the way out with our check posts. It's two percent of 2.5 million so that's 45,000 people. Three quarters of these have left the country. Of this number, 90 percent are in Iran and 10 percent in Pakistan. Of the 25 percent who stayed in the country, they tend to be split between Kabul [in the east], Ghazni [in the southeast] and Herat [in the west], in that order. Hazaras in Herat are 'hidden': there are very few Hazaras in the refugee camps in Herat. Ten percent of the refugees that have opted for Pakistan have ended up in Quetta [capital of the southwestern province of Baluchistan]. There is also a growing Hazara population near Peshawar, where the carpet industry has been booming. Some families send their children to work in the carpet factory there and some of them have relocated whole families. This is one way that Hazaras are coping with the drought: by handing over their kids to either distant relatives or contractors that then escort them to Peshawar and put them to work in the carpet factories. They get fed there and a monthly allowance is paid to the families back at home. [Child labour is contrary to international human rights conventions but, for many families, this practice remains a vital source of income]. Q: How about people who have chosen to remain in Bamyan Province, in the central highlands? How will they survive the next few months? A: Why presume that they will survive? There are sets of people that have remained. Those that have reserves and who will be ready to plant in the spring; then there are those who should have got out, but didn't. My inference drawn from the two percent migration is that fewer people migrated than should have. That's why we expect far more mortality over the winter. Conditions are right for a famine in Hazarajat over the coming months and that's why we're trying to up the assistance in the obvious centres of the [potential] famine. We're trying to respond to this with a 'hunger-belt initiative'. MSF [the health NGO Medecins sans frontieres] reports from Faryab District that it is already picking up alarming rates of infant mortality. That is consistent with what we're expecting in Hazarajat. Another factor is that the EPI [Expanded Programme of Immunisation] system has largely broken down over the past few years. Although there are attempts to get it going, the reality is that the areas worst hit by the food shortages are also the areas that have next to no EPI coverage. That means that the whole population is doubly vulnerable to winter epidemics. Most people who die in famines don't actually die of starvation, they die of disease while in a condition weakened by hunger and unprotected by vaccination. Q: Is there a specific time frame that assistance could be provided in - such as until the next harvest - which would place people in a better position to cope? A: There is no proof yet that we're not going to have any recovery. We don't reasonably expect that we'd have complete recovery but the fact that people are planting this autumn means that people are doing what they can. We also expect there to be spring planting. Our planning is to keep people alive until June when you start to get the barley harvest and then, after that, the wheat harvest. If we can help people until June, they'll survive. Unless there is a complete failure of spring rains this year, we should see an upward trend, with conditions getting better. If there is a complete failure of spring rains then the humanitarian situation will be so bad that there will be no option but to continue assistance. Q: There has been some donor fatigue when it comes to Afghanistan. After 21 years of war, people still cannot see an end to the crisis. Are we facing a never-ending cycle of assistance in Hazarajat? A: The numbers involved and the kind of assistance that we're talking about are tiny compared to other areas. Look at what is in the assistance packet that we're giving: our main input for the drought response is simply wheat. Compare this to some of the assistance in Europe, which has gone on for quite a few years. Most of our assistance is simply giving people a sack of wheat, which they have to ground down to flour and turn into bread. If they're lucky they can find some salt to mix in with it. If you take the example of the hunger belt project, the bulk of the assistance is in the form of wheat. We're trying to get 10,000 tonnes of wheat into the area but that is subject to availability. At present, WFP can only promise 3,000 mt. Our estimate is that there will be 34,000 clinically malnourished children in the areas where [only] the wheat will be distributed. In other words, only about one-sixth of the malnourished children in the area we are supporting will receive anything other than wheat. We know we don't have the resources to provide a balanced diet for all of them, but at least 6,000 will have something other than wheat. Q: Are the local Taliban authorities facilitating assistance to the area? A: At the local level we do get a high level of cooperation but, from [the Taliban] outside, it's never been a place where we've been asked 'why aren't you doing more there?' Central authority never seems to be pushing us in that direction. The point is that it's an active conflict area as well. At present, we're facing another conflict-related displacement in the middle of winter, in the middle of a drought and at the start of a [potential] famine. We've had several thousand families fleeing from neighbouring districts to Yakowlang. We know from previous winter conflicts that the first casualties are the children and the old, that possibly die from exposure on the way. The people who fled from Bamyan [province] in the last winter conflict left dead children along the way. The same pattern is being repeated. Q: How optimistic are you that people will cope? A: I often thought that Hazarajat should be used as a training centre for coping strategies, in the sense that so many people do survive on so little is one of the wonders of the world. You just have to sit in a Hazara house and look at what they've got and talk about how they live and you'll see what I mean. It comes down to working out how they manage to feed a large family on so little food when you see what's in the cooking pot. The puzzle starts from there. Obviously, remittances from outside is one of the ways in which people have survived and prospered. In some areas there is a regular pattern of migration, with people coming and going. Many of the men will go and work the winter in Pakistan or Iran and come back in the spring. In other places we've seen more permanent migration. They've established community networks in Iran, and to some extent in Pakistan, to assist them. Q: What's the situation with respect to education for children in Hazarajat? A: The main restriction to education in Hazarajat is the lack of resources. If there is a success story, then it is just how much effort is going on locally for people who want to educate their children, with no external resources from the educational ministry for the past 20 years. Most of the resources going into education are simply from either local district taxation or from what parents are giving. Disappointingly, there has been little support from outside. Given the extent of community determination and local resource mobilisation, they deserve more support from us. About 16-17 percent of children are growing up literate and there are some districts where it's even higher. For example, Yakowlang has traditionally been an advanced part of Hazarajat, with a tradition of non-agricultural employment and government service. These people have invested heavily in education. As a result, the highest literacy rates in the country may actually be in Yakowlang district. This includes girls who can study up to high school level. Although the Taliban have closed these schools five or six times they keep popping up, as locals have insisted on having female education.