WFP warns of impending food shortage in Herat

With only 600 mt of foodstuff available or enough to provide food assistance for one month only, WFP officials in Islamabad warned of an impending food shortage for some 80,000 Afghans living in refugee camps in the northeastern city of Herat, unless fresh donations were found soon. "The allocated amount of food for the IDPs living in Herat will last only one month," WFP regional public affairs officer Khaled Mansour told IRIN on Thursday. "We can either divert food from our other programmes within Afghanistan to help the IDPs, or if we received fresh donations, we could direct that directly to the IDPs in Herat." To understand the urgency of the problem, Mansour said WFP had enough food for its entire Afghan programme to help the most vulnerable 2.2 million people until maybe the end of April. However, if the present situation in Herat is not rectified soon, some of the food would have to be diverted there which would undoubtedly shorten the duration of WFP's other food relief projects within Afghanistan. "It isn't just the 80,000 IDPs in Herat," Mansour remarked. "We're talking about an estimated 500,000 people all over the country who have been displaced by war and drought in the last 12 months." he added. Before the drought, WFP was assisting 1.5 million people within Afghanistan on a regular basis, but that figure has almost doubled since the drought hit. "Given our strained resources, we have to make a very tough compromise....either we bring down the number of beneficiaries or make the food assistance projects themselves shorter," Mansour said. Severe drought and starvation has forced thousands of people to migrate from Afghanistan's western Badghis and Faryab provinces, as well as the central Ghor province to the western city of Herat, compounding an already severe IDP problem within Afghanistan. WFP estimates that it will need more than 170,000 mt of food at a cost of US $80 million in order to continue providing emergency food assistance to some 2.5 million people within Afghanistan starting April 2001.