On Afghan Women, Children and Starvation

[Andras Janossy, Dr.]

AFGHANISTAN'S COMING HUMANITARIAN DISASTER.

As the U.S. bombing campaign of Afghanistan enters its first week, the
humanitarian crisis that aid groups have been warning against seems
inevitable. According to Russia's Interfax News Agency, which was among the
few news organizations to report actual numbers of refugees on Thursday
night, 350,000 people have amassed in the northern Panjsher Gorge and over
150,000 in the provinces of Tahor and Badakhshan. There was no information
available about the likely larger number of refugees on the Afghan-Pakistan
border.

"People are fleeing their homes, while the humanitarian organizations
have ceased activities everywhere but the northern parts of the country
because of the air strikes," said the Northern Alliance's Public Relations
Minister Dr. Kanuni.

Since Oct. 9, the U.N. refugee agency has been forced to halt work at six
planned refugee camps on the Pakistan border because of opposition from
Afghan tribal groups. U.N. officials have said that more than a million
Afghans may flee their country in the coming weeks if the U.S. attacks
continue and serious fighting breaks out, with 1.5 million risking death by
starvation this winter. Pakistan already shelters more than 2 million
Afghan refugees and Pakistani officials have stated they do not want
refugees in their urban areas.

On Oct. 10 members of the U.S. Senate foreign relations committee heard
testimonies from representatives of humanitarian groups, who questioned the
effectiveness of the daily air drops of 37,000 food packets, especially
given that they will be used by tribal groups, now struggling for
prominence in the political vacuum caused by the war, to manipulate
civilians' alliances rather than to prevent hunger.

The food drops "appear to be intended more to send a political message to
the Afghan people and to the Muslim world than to reach large numbers of
people at risk of starvation," said Kenneth Bacon, a former Pentagon
spokesman who now heads up Refugees International. Other aid workers have
pointed out that 37,000 food packets are an incredibly small number
considering the masses of people going hungry in Afghanistan.

However government aid groups have stated the deliveries may grow and are
aimed at saving lives. "When you're feeding people, you're making a
statement," said Andrew Natsios, an administrator of the U.S. Agency for
International Development. "I don't think that's bad, I think that's good
... We want to send a message."

One of the questions humanitarian aid workers are asking is, should mass
starvation come, and should Afghanistan be depleted of almost all resources
as a result of the war, will the U.S. spend the billions of dollars
necessary to prevent a long-term humanitarian crisis. Delaware Senator
Joseph Biden, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has
argued the U.S. should, and has criticized the Bush administration's
previous pledge of $320 million in humanitarian aid as insufficient.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair has been urging the Bush administration
to rethink its statement that it "will not be involved in nation building"
in Afghanistan.

And indeed, in an Oct. 11 news conference President Bush retreated from his
previous position, stating the U.S. would be involved in Afghanistan after
the ousting of the Taliban and would work with the U.N. "to take over the
'nation building'" for the "stabilization of a future government." Bush
even urged American children to send a dollar to the White House to help
rebuild Afghanistan.

Zieba Shorish-Shamley, director of the Women's Alliance for Peace and
Human Rights in Afghanistan, praised Bush's promise to help rebuild
Afghanistan and work with the U.N, though she said she has heard such
promises before. "No government should be imposed on the Afghan people,"
said Shorish-Shamley. "If the nation of Afghanistan is ever to extricate
itself from the current chaos, an interim government must be formed that
includes representatives from all 23 tribal groups, the participation of
women and bona fide oversight from the United Nations, followed by
democratic elections."

Given the U.S government's policy record in Afghanistan, Shorish-Shamley is
certain a democracy cannot be formed only with U.S. assistance. "What the
U.S. government created during the Cold War and afterwards in Afghanistan
was the seeds for permanent violence. It spent billions of dollars on arms
and training of the very soldiers who have become terrorists."

Shorish-Shamley adds that the greatest challenge for peace and democracy in
Afghanistan is to remove the influence of governments that have created
warring factions in the post-civil war era. "After 1989, the U.S. totally
dropped Afghanistan, providing no help for reconstruction," she said.
"That's when Iran, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and practically all
Afghanistan's neighboring countries moved in, making it impossible for a
coalition government to come about and securing the rise of the ruthless
Taliban."

Shorish-Shamley also believes that the Afghan people will not accept a
puppet regime forced into power by any diplomatic initiative. "People in
Afghanistan may not be educated in the formal sense, but after over two
dozen years of war and rule by fear they will not abide another
foreign-imposed government." Shorish-Shamley argues that the participation
of Afghan women in a coalition government should be primary in any U.S. or
U.N. diplomacy. "Women are the majority population in Afghanistan," she
said. "They have been living in terror and the protection of their rights
must be part the deal."

It is impossible to know the outcome of the current bombing campaign in
Afghanistan. Taliban military targets are running out. The U.S. government,
for the moment, is reluctant to put air strikes behind the Northern
Alliance forces outside Kabul to allow them to overrun the city. The
Taliban may never be able to deliver Osama bin Laden to the U.S.
government, a stipulation of ending the war.

What is clear is that millions of Afghan civilians may die over the next
few months. Shorish-Shamley reports there are 300,000 pregnant women in
Afghanistan with no access to medical care. One out of four children born
in Afghanistan today die within the first few days of their life. "If you
could think of a worst nightmare, this is it," said Shorish-Shamley. "Food
drops don't hurt, but they don't really help."

[Source: By Tamara Straus- AlterNet.org - October 12, 2001]