U.N. official protests Taliban interference

By B. Muralidhar Reddy

ISLAMABAD, MAY 30. The United Nations Co-ordinator for Afghanistan today deplored what he termed as the interference the aid community in Afghanistan has increasingly faced in recent weeks and warned of a serious situation developing if things did not improve.

Addressing a news conference here, the UN Co-ordinator for Afghanistan, Mr. Erick De Mul, said that pleas made by the UN agencies engaged in humanitarian help to stop interference in their work has fallen on deaf ears.

A United Nations team was holding discussions with the Taliban in Kabul over the past three days. Asked if the situation in the aftermath of the talks had improved, Mr. De Mul said that there was no change in the ground situation.

Without the assistance rendered by the aid agencies over the years, neighbouring countries would have witnessed and borne the burden of massive emigration of families desperate to survive, he maintained.

He was at pains to emphasise that over the last three years, the assistance community has channeled over $600,000 per day into Afghanistan, a figure expected to reach $800,000 per day in 2001. In 2001 alone, food aid will reach almost four million needy Afghans out of a total population estimated at between 20 to 22 million. Victims of emergencies will receive food aid, while over 430,000 Afghans, mainly women and children, receive heavily subsidised bread from WFP bakeries.

The United Nations has trained over seven million Afghans in mine awareness, cleared 550 million square meters of land and destroyed 1.6 million explosive devices, rendering farmlands, and residential areas safe.

He said the aid community provides stable employment for Afghans. The assistance community currently employs about 25,000 locals, with the Mine Action Programme being the single largest provider of decent paid employment in the country. If these people provide food, clothes, and shelter for 10 others in their families, then almost a quarter of a million people are benefiting from employment by the aid community.

Mr. De Mul said that in 2000, the combination of conflict and drought triggered a major displacement of Afghans. At present, about 800,000 Afghans have left their homes, with at least half a million internally displaced.

Estimates of Afghans stranded in villages who lack the money for transport to leave vary between one to two million people. He said the numbers of persons leaving their homes are increasing every day.

In the course of 2001-2002, the United Nations now believes that the number of Afghans who will have to leave their homes to survive may more than double. In response to this emergency, the aid community has tried to address both the needs of the internally displaced as well as those of families in their areas of origin.

He said that one of the main elements of this strategy is to deliver aid, including but not limited to food aid, to populations in areas of origin to help them survive without having to migrate to urban centres in Afghanistan or beyond Afghanistan's borders.

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