Aid workers warn of starvation as food aid suspended

By RAYMOND WHITAKER

ISLAMABAD - Aid agencies helping to feed more than three million people in Afghanistan are warning that unless the World Food Programme, a UN agency, lifts its 12-day suspension on deliveries, people could start dying of hunger in less than a month.

The WFP put food shipments on hold September 12, the day after the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, saying it would not resume them until it could be sure that supplies were not being improperly diverted.

According to agency sources, its decision was savaged at an emergency meeting in the Pakistani capital over the weekend by official representatives of the US and the European Union as well as all the 30 non-governmental organisations present.

But Khaled Adly, the UN body's regional head, continued to insist that unless it could monitor where the food was going, the stocks would remain in its warehouses in neighbouring countries.

"The WFP has never taken this line in any previous conflict," said one official. "Its people on the ground have kept supplies moving at considerable danger to themselves, even if some of it was being stolen. If Afghanistan is attacked, aid distribution will obviously be impossible, but so far we have been in a phoney war. We all said that now was the time to do what we can while we can, whether some food goes missing or not."

The UN agency's own figures show, according to sources, that some 400,000 people in northwestern Afghanistan will run out of food in two weeks. Within three months over two million people will be starving if no more food gets through.

"That assessment was based on people staying put," another official added.

"The threat of attack has got half the population on the move, which puts more of them at risk, and lawlessness is increasing.

"At this time of year we are normally moving supplies into Afghanistan as fast as possible, so as to get four months' worth in position by the end of October, when winter starts to make movement impossible. We will never get back the 12 days we have already lost. If no more food gets in, you can expect people to start dying by mid-October."

John Wilder, Afghanistan country representative for the US branch of Save the Children, said the meeting was "constructive", and he hoped the WFP would change its mind soon. His organisation still had 200 local staff within Afghanistan, who could distribute any supplies they received.

"We managed to bring in and distribute food for 2,000 families from Turkmenistan," he said. "If we could do it with our small resources, the WFP would be able to do much more."

A spokesman for Oxfam, Alex Renton, said that since September 11 the agency had shipped 1,500 tonnes of grain from Iran to Herat, in western Afghanistan, where it had 40 local staff still able to distribute supplies.

Many of Oxfam's 100 local workers in the rest of the country were still functioning, although the Taleban regime's ban on using satellite telephones is hampering contact.

Washington has been accused of putting political pressure on the UN to hold back food as a means of squeezing Afghanistan, but recently the State Department said the US was, and would continue to be, the largest source of aid to the country.

"It would be politically disastrous for the Americans to be seen to be hurting ordinary Afghans," said one aid worker.

Another suggestion has been that anti-American elements in the UN are trying to make the US look like a bully, but the aid official saw that as far-fetched. "It is far more likely that someone panicked at WFP headquarters, and then bureaucratic inertia took over," he said.

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