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Aid agencies race to help Afghans
11/23/2001By BURT HERMAN
Associated Press Writer
A U.N. official said the United Nations hoped to soon restore regular operations in the key northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif just south of the border with Uzbekistan, boosting efforts to get aid to needy Afghans.
Meanwhile, the World Food Program said it had launched an air bridge to Afghanistan to try to bring food urgently needed in the northeast near the border with Tajikistan, where the cold already has set in.
It was the first humanitarian airlift launched from Tajikistan to bring food into Afghanistan. Aircraft bringing about 17 tons of wheat flour left for the city of Faizabad, the provincial capital of Badakhshan.
``Time is ticking, winter has started, and we need to get this food as quickly as possible into the less accessible regions of northeastern Afghanistan,'' Bukhard Oberle, the WFP director for Afghanistan, said in a statement.
The international Red Cross said a 59-truck aid convoy carrying 1,500 tons of food arrived Friday in Mazar-e-Sharif from Turkmenistan to feed some 65,000 people in the area.
Another 10-truck convoy was on its way from Mashad, Iran, to the western Afghan city of Herat, the humanitarian organization said.
Distribution of food and blankets supplied by Iran's Red Crescent Society has begun in two overcrowded refugee camps outside Herat.
A convoy of 16 trucks loaded with 125 tons of food and other supplies arrived in Herat on Thursday night, and the relief distribution began Friday to 1,255 families.
In Geneva, officials from the International Organization for Migration said a 30-truck convoy of winter clothing, blankets, cooking sets and books had arrived at the Turkmenistan border and was expected to cross over into northern Afghanistan on Saturday. An airlift of 7,100 winterized tents from Pakistan was due to begin next week.
Speaking in the Uzbek border town of Termez, Antonio Donini, deputy U.N. coordinator for Afghanistan, said he met Thursday with Gen. Rashid Dostum, one of the northern alliance warlords who took back the city Nov. 9, and received assurances that international staff could operate safely there.
``We were assured that we could resume activities as normal,'' Donini said, adding that staff could return permanently to Mazar-e-Sharif within a week. ``The authorities understand that the eyes of the world are on them.''
U.N. officials were to meet Saturday with the other two warlords who reclaimed control of the city, but Donini said ``we feel confident that (the city) is under one control'' — meaning Dostum.
Mazar-e-Sharif has had a violent history in recent years as control of the city has shifted back and forth between Taliban and opposition forces, resulting in retribution killings of civilians by both sides.
The ICRC said Thursday it had recovered between 400 and 600 bodies in the city, but declined to say whether the victims were civilians or soldiers.
The uncertainty over the security situation in Mazar-e-Sharif and fighting in nearby Kunduz also are preventing the opening of the Friendship Bridge, the only crossing from Uzbekistan into Afghanistan over the Amu-Darya River.
Opening the bridge near Termez would allow speedy deliveries of aid supplies to the 3.4 million people who rely on assistance in northern Afghanistan. U.N. aid is now going into the region on a cumbersome system of barges or a much longer route through Turkmenistan.
French troops were waiting in Uzbekistan to secure the airport in Mazar-e-Sharif for aid deliveries, French Cooperation Minister Charles Josselin said.