12 October 2001
USAID Head Stresses Urgency of Aid Delivery to Afghanistan
(Winter could make food deliveries impossible in some areas)(820)
By Charlene Porter
Washington File Staff Writer
Washington -- The international aid effort to prevent famine in
Afghanistan has placed a "huge focus" on moving food stores into areas
that could soon become inaccessible to delivery trucks as winter
weather sets in, according to Andrew Natsios, the senior U.S. official
in charge of the humanitarian relief effort. In a matter of weeks,
winter snow may begin in the Hindu Kush mountains with elevations
greater than 7,000 meters in the landlocked Central Asian nation.
"People may not survive the winter, because many people are nomads in
those areas, or they grow barley way up in the mountains in the high
plateaus, and the crops in that area all failed," Natsios,
administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development
(USAID), said at a Washington press briefing October 11. "Those people
are in very bad shape right now. They don't have food stocks."
These mountainous areas are among those targeted for airdrops of food
supplies. Natsios said 145,000 humanitarian meals ready-to-eat (MREs)
had been airdropped into the country at the time of the briefing. He
said relief agencies had recommended where the U.S. military should
deliver the packets based on two criteria -- extreme inaccessibility
and acute malnutrition.
"It will be a life-saver for a relatively small population of people,
maybe in the hundreds of thousands, in these remote areas," according
to the humanitarian official.
The food airdrops received considerable media attention when they
began at about the same time as U.S. military strikes on strongholds
of the ruling Taliban militia. But Natsios said that component of the
humanitarian campaign comprises only one-quarter to one-half percent
of the total effort to move food aid into Afghanistan, torn by decades
of war and several years of drought. The international community aims
to transport almost 400,000 tons of food aid into Afghanistan over the
next year.
Natsios said the strategy is to move the vast majority of those relief
supplies over land from warehouses in countries that border
Afghanistan -- Iran, Pakistan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan. Over these
routes, commodities can be delivered to villages and rural areas where
they are most needed. "By keeping more spigots open, more food will
move in," the aid official explained.
As convoys move into Afghanistan through these various routes,
problems occur. The World Food Program (WFP) reports two isolated
incidents in which Taliban militia attempted to impose a duty on the
movement of food into the country. In a Washington File telephone
interview October 12, Geneva WFP spokesman Trevor Rowe said a
commercial transporter did pay the fee in one case, and WFP reimbursed
him. Generally, however, Rowe said WFP will refuse to pay such duties.
The two cases occurred on different routes into the countries, so at
this point, Rowe said WFP does not regard this impediment to food
deliveries as a "generalized phenomenon."
Asked about the degree to which the incidents have impeded the overall
WFP effort to move food into Afghanistan, Rowe said, "Not on a major
scale yet."
In briefing international reporters, Natsios said the military
operation against Taliban targets and terrorist camps has not impeded
the humanitarian campaign. "The great bulk of Afghans are not affected
by the military operation. The great bulk of Afghans live in rural
areas. The rural areas are relatively unaffected by what is
happening," he said. The routes that trucks use to transport food
deliveries into the country have not been bombed and remain open, he
said.
Natsios said the potential for famine in Afghanistan was serious
months before the September 11 attacks focused new attention on the
country and created a stand-off between the United States and the
Taliban over the militia's refusal to hand over suspected terrorist
Usama bin Laden. When he stepped into the job as USAID administrator
last May, Natsios said he identified humanitarian disasters in
Afghanistan, Congo and Sudan as major emergencies. He offered
assurances October 12 that the laser-like attention on Afghanistan
does not dilute ongoing concern for problems in Africa.
"There will be no reduction of aid to any other areas of the world,
and the reason for that very simply is that the president added $320
million to our budget to run this program from the $40,000 million
supplemental appropriation that was approved by Congress. This is not
taken from any existing accounts," Natsios said.
The USAID administrator added that he'd met with 10 African
ambassadors October 10 to discuss initiatives against HIV/AIDS. "We
continue to be committed," he said. "There will be no cutback of any
kind, not only in Africa, but in Latin America, other parts of Asia or
the Middle East."
(The Washington File is a product of the Office of International
Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site:
http://usinfo.state.gov)
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