ISLAMABAD: Afghan aid workers left behind after foreign colleagues were forced to flee the country have staved off a humanitarian catastrophe despite being isolated from outside support by American bombs and Taliban harassment.
They have delivered food, blankets, medicine and essential services under huge pressure and spurned the opportunity to seek refuge across the border, according to colleagues, who described them as forgotten heroes.
Cold and hunger threaten millions of people but so far the aid effort has not collapsed thanks to Afghan volunteers who took responsibility after foreigners were expelled or withdrawn. Cut off from their superiors, they have ignored the bombs and ensured a continued flow of aid by charming, bribing and defying Taliban commanders.
Drawn mostly from the remnant of Afghanistan’s destroyed middle class, it is the educated elite’s first taste of power and responsibility in years. Aid agencies differ over how grave is the threat of people starving and freezing to death this winter, but most agree their Afghan staff have prevented the situation slipping out of control.
Taliban troops have seized offices, vehicles and stores of several agencies in raids which left staff beaten and intimidated, though some property was returned on the orders of the Taliban leader, Mullah Omar.
In a policy reversal on Monday the regime asked the UN for humanitarian assistance and pledged full cooperation with its staff, who remained sceptical after previous bruising encounters. Several NGOs said that Taliban tanks had been parked inside refugee camps for protection from air strikes and that some commanders demanded bribes for cooperation. One in Herat demanded, and received, three motorbikes.
After foreign colleagues left Taliban troops vented resentment of the west at the Afghan aid workers since they spoke English and earned relatively high salaries.
“The international staff were a buffer for that sort of hostility but once we left it was all directed at the Afghan staff,” said Jeff McMurdo, of the International Organization for Migration, which has 150 volunteers working in camps at Herat and Kunduz.
“We see them as heroes, they are working under extraordinary pressure. We have told them not to risk their lives but often they will do so to protect our property because they feel responsible for it.”
Taliban guards usually insist on standing beside them when they make their daily satellite phone call to the IOM office here. “You can hear the strain in their voice,” said McMurdo.
Mohammad Rahim said his fellow Afghan aid workers were motivated by the salary, which supported their extended families, and the knowledge that there was no one else to do the work. ”This is the biggest drought in 30 years and we want to be part of that.”
The World Food Programme and UNICEF said more supplies were urgently needed but praised their Afghan staff for maintaining transport, storage and distribution.
Save the Children’s 160 Afghan employees have intensified the group’s winterization programme despite crippled phone and road links, said Sami Hashemi, 37, who is based in Kabul.
STRUGGLE TO REACH REFUGEES: Aid agencies are now finding it too dangerous to operate in many of the areas where Afghans are most at risk of starvation, as law and order breaks down and communications are cut.
Although the World Food Programme (WFP) has managed to increase the flow of food into Afghanistan in the last few days, the prospects for the winter are looking increasingly bleak, Lindsey Davies, a WFP spokeswoman here, said.
The WFP is now delivering 2,000 tonnes of food a week into the country. But UN agencies warned five weeks ago that up to 7.5 million Afghans would need to receive aid before mid-November to survive the winter and 50,000 tonnes a month would have to be delivered.
At least 700,000 people face starvation in areas which could be cut off by snow any day now - Hazajarat in the central highlands, the north-east and the Panjsheer. The WFP says it needs to deliver 39,000 tonnes of food to these people before the passes become inaccessible. But in the last 10 days it has only managed to get 8,000 tonnes to these areas.
“We are doing cartwheels and somersaults to work out ways round it,” said Davies. Emergency plans include airlifting in 50 Swedish trucks with snow blades and snowploughs in the hope of keeping the Anjuman pass open for a couple of weeks longer.
The WFP has also employed an arctic environment specialist who will try to set up a logistics base camp on the pass to keep supplies moving to local truckers.
Security on the ground was now too bad for NGOs to operate in the provinces of Badghis, Ghor, Baghlan, Balkh and Faryab. An estimated 500,000 people in these areas have been hit by three years of drought as well as fighting.
They will run out of food by the end of December. They are also likely to be cut off by snow in a few weeks. The WFP says they need 27,000 tonnes of food for the winter but admitted it could not reach them in present circumstances. ”It is a grave concern,” said Davies.
In recognition of the fact that time has already begun to run out for the humanitarian effort, the WFP has been looking at the possibility of airdrops, previously dismissed by many agencies as impractical. —Dawn/The Guardian News Service.