MPs see benefit in terror attacks

25 Dec, 2001 07:46 AM2 mins to read

The World Trade Center attack helped avert a humanitarian "catastrophe" in Afghanistan that would have gone unnoticed by the international community, says a committee of British MPs.

Members of the Commons International Development Committee said the war against al Qaeda and the Taleban had broken the "deafening silence" over famine after the worst drought in Afghanistan for 30 years.

Tony Baldry, Conservative chairman of the cross-party committee, said: "Afghanistan had the potential for a humanitarian catastrophe of huge proportions before September 11, and the media and other people were not in the least bit interested."

Another committee member, Labour MP Tony Colman, added: "If September 11 had not happened, we could have had many millions of people dying because the world community would not have responded in the way it did."

The committee urged the British Government to increase spending on aid, and ensure that pledges of support were converted into hard currency.

Mr Baldry said refugee camps in Pakistan had been "forgotten" by the international community, and food aid had been stopped in the mid-1990s.

"There are many forgotten crises around the world," he said. "There are 3.5 million Afghan refugees in Pakistan, many of whom have been there a very long time.

MPs warned that poverty and deprivation helped to breed political and religious fundamentalism, and warned that the international community needed to act to prevent more countries falling into a "black hole".

A report by the committee said that much of the £500 million pledged since September 11 had not been turned into hard currency.

MPs warned that tonnes of aid lay in warehouses, but was vulnerable to attack when it was transferred for transport to remote areas. They called for moves to improve security.

The committee appealed for reform of the way the United Nations collects aid and called for Britain to draw up a timetable for increasing its international aid budget to 0.7 per cent of national income.

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