U.N. resumes food shipment to Afghanistan

By B. Muralidhar Reddy

ISLAMABAD, SEP. 29 The U.N. World Food Programme (WFP) today started the shipment of the first emergency food rations into Afghanistan since the suspension of food deliveries into the country on September 12.

Deteriorating security conditions and lack of commercial transport had forced the WFP to halt food shipments to this country shortly after the agency had launched a multi- million dollar appeal to save millions of Afghans from the hunger caused by a vicious cycle of drought and war.

The WFP said here today that 400 tonnes of food would be trucked this weekend from its warehouses in Pakistan across the borders to help feed tens of thousands of hungry people in Afghanistan.

The first convoy, carrying 200 tonnes, left Peshawar today for Kabul and two other shipments are scheduled to truck 100 tonnes of food each to Kabul and Herat. The food should arrive in the two cities in a few days.

``Once we ensure that food aid is reaching the most needy people inside Afghanistan and local trucks continue to be available to move it from our warehouses inside the country to the rural areas, we will move more food into Afghanistan,'' Mr. Khaled Adly, Regional Director for the Mediterranean, Middle East and Central Asia, WFP, said here.

``So far we have been lucky that this has not turned into a major refugee crisis. In contrast, the situation inside Afghanistan is extremely critical and could end with a major humanitarian crisis. Even before the current developments, many Afghans have resorted to eating grass and locusts to survive and pre-famine conditions were observed in various parts of the country,'' Mr. Adly said.

The WFP had been expanding its operations to cover 5.5 million people who would become critically dependent on food aid this winter. Trucks carrying WFP food are ready to move into Afghanistan from Iran, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan to replenish food aid stocks in the northern provinces within the coming few days.

``Our local staff together with aid workers from various NGOs are working under very adverse conditions to help avoid starvation in Afghanistan. Existing restrictions on communications from Afghanistan make effective coordination extremely difficult. But despite the ongoing crisis, the WFP has continued to feed up to a million people inside Afghanistan. These are the people whom the WFP could access after the international staff were withdrawn and the local transport network almost crumbled,'' Mr. Adly said.

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Section  : International
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