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November
More misery in store for a longsuffering people
Go to Part 1: On the Military Front
Part 2: The Humanitarian Crisis
November 7, 2001
The number of innocent civilians killed by United States military action could pale in comparison to those in danger from the looming humanitarian crisis. Most international relief staff left Afghanistan when the U.S. attack began; and while Afghan nationals continue to work, they are hampered from monitoring the distribution of food, which may be stolen by the Taliban or various warlords.
Although there has been a functioning food distribution system inside Afghanistan, it is crippled by the lack of fuel and limited access to people displaced from the cities. The U.N. World Food Program (WFP) and most other relief agencies stopped shipping food into Afghanistan as soon as the U.S. bombing started and have only partially resumed these shipments, leaving food stocks dangerously low.
The Victims
Children, pregnant women and the elderly are most vulnerable. The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) reports in the next six weeks 100,000 children are in danger of dying in a country where half of the children are undernourished and one fourth die before the age of five.
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This 1992 photo depicts a Pakistani woman concealed by burqa in Peshawar, Pakistan. (Photo by Ron Martin, Jr.)
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The U.S. has made large contributions for humanitarian relief to Afghanistan in the past and continues to provide aid, including Bush's pledge for each child in the U.S. to contribute $1 for the children of Afghanistan. U.S. Special Forces are even reported to be planning to assist with humanitarian relief.
However, this will only provide limited and inadequate relief instead of solving the underlying problem. The bombing has prevented delivery of aid to some of the neediest people in Afghanistan. The U.S. has ignored the call from several international relief agencies
-- and from the head of the United Nations High Commission for Human Rights (UNHCHR), Mary Robinson -- for a temporary halt of bombing to allow delivery of humanitarian aid.
Many Afghans are already vulnerable from three continuous years of severe drought. As many as four people per day are dying in parts of central Afghanistan affected by drought, not by war. Soon, winter will prevent delivery of aid to isolated parts of the country. Aid agencies have proposed using snowplows and bulldozers in a desperate attempt to keep roads to isolated areas open longer.
The United Nations World Food Program (WFP) estimates four million Afghans depend on food aid, which is currently reaching 60-70 percent of these people. This is expected to increase to six million needing food aid in winter, after meager food stocks from this year's poor harvest are depleted.
The Taliban have exacerbated the problem by previously burning crops, blockading relief shipments and massacring people in opposition areas. The Taliban and al Qaeda have also obstructed food distribution by seizing food, taking vehicles and other property from relief organizations, beating up and expelling staff, occupying relief facilities and demanding taxes on shipments of humanitarian aid.
There is reported to be a slight improvement since Taliban leader Mullah Omar issued an edict to ensure the security and safety of relief agencies and the return of stolen assets; however, poor communications prevent the edict from reaching many areas. Now the Taliban Ambassador to Pakistan, Abdul Salam Zaeef, is ironically calling for a major humanitarian operation by the U.N. -- whom he accuses of having political motives for failing to work inside Afghanistan -- to help alleviate the looming humanitarian catastrophe.
The initially well publicized U.S. airdrops of food have done little to alleviate the humanitarian catastrophe, but have instead turned into a propaganda faux pas. From the start, international relief organizations have criticized them as inadequate, inappropriate and dangerous.
It is impossible to target the neediest people; and the small quantity of pre-packaged containers is a poor substitute for flour, wheat, rice and cooking oil. Often, people are suspicious of the food drops, which they see as coming from those who are bombing them. This could also be problematic for humanitarian organizations because the victims may wrongly associate them with the military.
More troubling is the danger the airdrops can pose to people who may be injured traveling through minefields to reach the airdropped food. The U.S. has even had to re-design food packages, broadcast radio warnings and discontinue food drops in areas where they have dropped cluster bombs -- in order to prevent people from confusing unexploded bomblettes for food packages.
Human rights groups have condemned the use of cluster bombs because the unexploded bomblettes are as dangerous and indiscriminate as landmines but local mine clearing staff lack the expertise to remove them. These cluster bombs also deny farmers use of land in an already starving country.
The Refugees
The bombing has also displaced hundreds of thousands of people who flee their homes without money, food or possessions and are often on the brink of starvation. The U.N. reports that up to 70 percent of the inhabitants of Kabul and Kandahar have fled. Only about 100,000 of the predicted one million refugees have entered Pakistan -- and only because the border remains closed.
Neighboring Iran, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan have also closed their borders to all but a few refugees. In sharp contrast to Western countries, Pakistan and Iran have accepted millions of Afghan refugees with little financial or logistic support from the international community, during more than twenty years of conflict.
In the Pakistani town of Peshawar, one of five persons is a refugee; and the locals, who are ethnic Pashtoon like many of the Afghan refugees,
sympathize with them. However, many resent the Afghans who they believe are taking scarce jobs in this economically depressed country and are creating social problems by smuggling in weapons and drugs.
Pakistan has been very careful to screen the few refugees it allows in, in order to prevent armed fighters from entering and destabilizing the country. Pakistan, with the largest population of Afghan refugees, is afraid that temporary refugee camps will become permanent.
So, numerous displaced Afghans are trapped inside their country, near the border, but away from their homes and in need of food, clothes, blankets, tents, medicine, sanitation and clean water. Rud Lubbers, head of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), expressed his concern that the Taliban may be organizing refugee camps to imprison, force-labor and conscript displaced Afghans.
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During his 1992 travels, Ron Martin, Jr., photographed this wreckage of a Soviet tank near the village of Naray Kelay in northeastern Afghanistan. (Photo by Ron Martin, Jr.)
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Non-government organizations (NGOs) report that both the Taliban and Northern Alliance have been conscripting children into their forces. The Taliban have allegedly been moving tanks into refugee camps, further endangering refugees during U.S. bombing, and taking doctors and paramedics from the Red Cross Hospital in Kandahar to work on the front line.
The Health of the Country
Many hospitals -- operating without electricity, water, or adequate medicine -- have been overwhelmed by bombing casualties. Relief agencies have been unable to provide health care for cholera, tuberculosis and dysentery inside Afghanistan. Vaccinations for polio eradication have also been disrupted.
With so many other problems, mental health problems often go untreated. During the bombing it has been impossible to provide psychological therapy inside Afghanistan, and psychological counseling in refugee camps is rare. Countless Afghans have been traumatized by the fighting and by being forced to flee their homes.
A 1997 UNICEF report found that in the fighting from 1992 to 1996, 70 percent of the children in Kabul lost at least one member of their family, 95 percent witnessed actual acts of violence and 90 percent believed that they would not survive the fighting. Afghan women have also been brutalized under Taliban rule; and while the U.S. and the West strongly condemned the Taliban's treatment of women after the September 11 attack, they remained relatively silent before then.
In fact, until September 11, most people had little knowledge about what was happening inside Afghanistan; and the international community largely ignored the Afghans' suffering. Saudi Arabia and Pakistan provided money and weapons to the Taliban, but like the rest of the Muslim world -- with the notable exception of Iran -- did little to promote peace and reconstruction in the country.
Perhaps the greatest hypocrites are the protesting Islamic extremists in Pakistan and throughout the world who failed to protest the numerous atrocities committed by the Taliban and al Qaeda against fellow Muslims.
However, many human rights organizations have long highlighted and condemned atrocities occurring in Afghanistan. Amnesty International has pointed out that human rights must be put on top of the agenda for Afghanistan because they will have a direct impact on international peace and stability.
Mary Robinson, head of the United Nations High Commission for Human Rights (UNHCHR), has emphasized the need to protect Afghan civilians during the U.S. military action and has called for exploring ways to prosecute past and present human rights abuses in Afghanistan. The international community must clearly state that it will not tolerate human rights abuses by any of the warring parties, and the U.S. should specifically warn the Northern Alliance that they will be held accountable for any war crimes they commit.
Learn more about the author of this guest column, Ron
Martin, Jr.
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