Oxfam's Response to Humanitarian Crisis in Afghanistan

Posted: 28 September 2001

OXFAM today called for a massive humanitarian response to meet the needs of six million or more Afghan people facing a winter without food that will claim many lives.

"This situation is so difficult because it is a combination of disasters: the threat of violence, on top of a civil war, worsened by a three-year drought, and it will be compounded by the arrival of winter," said Oxfam Humanitarian Director Paul Smith-Lomas. "Aid agencies alone can't tackle this. Without a massive international effort now, just keeping people alive will be beyond us."

Smith-Lomas said that airlifts of food aid might already be out of the question. "To feed 6 million people we would need more than 125 flights of Hercules airplanes each day. This might be mathematically possible, but unlikely to happen because civilian planes cannot fly in a war zone."

Oxfam is therefore calling for the trucking of food aid to resume. "People are also fleeing from cities to remote areas, so there are new challenges for our local staff to find and help these people."

"Everywhere we turn, there are huge problems and difficult choices," said Smith-Lomas, who, after ten years at Oxfam, working in emergencies such as Rwanda, Bosnia, Zaire, Ethiopia and Sudan, believes the situation in Afghanistan is unlike anything he has seen before.

Oxfam today called for:

1. Sufficient food to reach both government and opposition-held areas before the onset of winter. Trucking seems to be the best option.

2. Borders must be opened immediately.

3. Refugee camps must be screened to ensure they remain civilian, secure and adequately provisioned. Attention must be given to the special needs of women.

Oxfam also urged the Taliban to ensure that aid agencies be allowed to deliver humanitarian supplies to civilians safely, including being allowed proper communications to verify that the most needy people get the proper food.

Meanwhile, Oxfam water engineers, working with the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) and the Pakistan government, began inspection of 12 government-proposed sites for refugee camps in Baluchistan, western Pakistan. Two had to be rejected immediately because there was no available water. The agency also flew in more water engineers as it geared up for potentially one of the biggest emergency responses in its history.

The Pakistan government has nominated twelve sites near the Chaman border crossing (near Quetta) but "the land is a desert between two mountain ranges," said Oxfam drought project office Yasmin Bibi. In all, the government has nominated 100 campsites for Afghan refugees--though the border remained closed yesterday despite calls for it to be opened to allow refugees in, as international law demands.

Bibi said that drilling for water was extremely difficult in Baluchistan. "We dug 14 wells in the area so far this year. Sometimes you hit water at 50 feet, and that simple and easy to install hand pumps. But one well we dug went to 1250 feet, it took two weeks and when we found water it was contaminated, so we had to start again."