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We
inform about Afghanistan
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This
newsletter is about Terre
des hommes’ emergency assistance to vulnerable displaced
people in northern Afghanistan. With financial assistance of
Chaine du Bonheur, Swiss Development Cooperation and ECHO, and
supported by MSF and Swedish Committee for Afghanistan, Terre
des hommes together with its local partner NPO/RRAA is
providing humanitarian aid to the suffering civilian population
– focussing on food distribution, blankets and health services.
The economic, social and ecological costs of such a massive influx
of internally displaced people are creating an enormous burden for
the population in Rustaq who is already suffering from the severe
recent drought as well as the devastating effects of the two heavy
earthquakes of 1998.
Most of observers and UN officials are describing the present
Afghan refugee crisis as one of the worst in the recent history.
According to figures of international aid agencies, there are
around half a million people displaced inside Afghanistan because
of conflict, drought and hunger. The United Nations has estimated
about 12 million of Afghanistan’s 22 million people are affected
by the drought, up to four million of them seriously. Grain
production has fallen in half, people have eaten their seed, sold
their livestock and watched their fruit trees and vineyards die.
Many households are on the move but there are few places to go
that are any better.
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Emergency
intervention in Rustaq
Rustaq
is a very remote district in northern Takhar province with
approximately 400,000 people living in about 173 villages – many
of them very remote in the mountains and only accessible by
donkeys and horses. The district is the biggest one of Takhar and
still under the control of former Afghan defense minister and
opposition commander Ahmed Shah Masood.
During the past four months more than 1,600 displaced families
fled from the advancing frontlines to this town in which
approximately 31.000 people are trying to make a living from
agriculture and petty trade. The ongoing fighting between the
different factions, the severe drought of the recent past, the
devastating earthquakes of 1998, the lack of governmental
structures and the poor infrastructure (no electricity, no safe
drinking water etc.) and now the constant influx of new displaced
people – fleeing from the frontlines - are contributing to a
deteriorating health situation due to high rates of communicable
diseases. In addition the population is urged to share the little
food resources they have and the rate of malnutrition is
dramatically increasing.
Problems
to be solved
It
has become increasingly difficult for the emergency team of Terre
des hommes and NPO/RRAA to focus only on internally displaced
people since the local population is already seriously traumatized
by the proximity of the frontlines and the suffering of the past.
The war situation allows limited access to food and non-food
supply and there are additional logistical problems for purchasing
goods and commodities in nearby Tajikistan. The cold weather with
heavy snowfall and frost require additional food distribution and
proper shelter material and special care has to be taken for
children who constitute 60% of the refugees. In addition the
absence of women in community life due to cultural and traditional
values which prohibit participation of women in decision making
creates enormous difficulties to access mother and child health.
Health
The
reinforcement and expansion of the existing clinic in Rustaq was
one of the first priorities of the emergency team. Strengthening
the health infrastructure is also benefiting the host population
and equal treatment of both refugee and local people will help
avoiding resentments against internally displaced people.
Financial and material support has been given to Rustaq clinic,
and doctors and nurses have been hired in order to provide equal
and efficient treatment. Internally displaced people and poor
local people are receiving medicines and health care free of
charge.
1.200 internally displaced people and 800 locals received medical
care during the past two months.
In average 90 patients per day are seeking medical help and
treatment.
Measles
Measles
is one of the most severe health problem throughout Afghanistan.
Displacement, overcrow-ding, very cold weather conditions, high
levels of malnutrition and poor hygiene in Rustaq are all factors
that encourage the emergence of very large-scale epidemics.
Measles remains a major cause of childhood mortality throughout
the world, especially in countries like Afghanistan. Measles is
one of the most serious health problems encountered in refugee
situations and has been reported as the leading cause of mortality
in children.
Especially in Rustaq town and district the emergency team
faced the chronic and complex problem of measles. Measles is
endemic, and has been always present, during all the years and in
all seasons.
However,
the high mortality is preventable and mass immunization against
measles is one of the top priorities in the initial phase of a
emergency case. Unfortunately the last campaign was done in 1998.
That means that all children under three are not protected.
Due to increasing number of cases and deaths the emergency team
started a mass immunization. Without any hesitation 33 staff
members of our partner organization NPO/RRAA and of Terre des
hommes were assigned and additional 57 qualified persons in
Rustaq hired in order to vaccinate more than 7.000 children during
the first two days. Simultaneously vitamin A supplementation is
given to vaccinated children. Medecins sans Frontieres (MSF) provided training, vaccines, budgets
for salaries and fuel and UNICEF assisted in establishing a fixed
center for vaccination in Rustaq town and providing additional
vaccines.
A
mobile team of nurses and doctors is in charge to reach at least
one village per day for the campaign. 4x4 vehicles and even
donkeys are used. Over the
next
three month 125 villages will be covered and approximately 30.000
children will be vaccinated, therefore significantly decreasing the
morbidity and mortality of this disease within the district.
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“Gender
advisor to the UN
in Afghanistan says for the first time in her life she saw
children turned navy blue by extreme cold and hunger.
Describing life at Mazar in northern Afghanistan, Maysoon Melek,
gender advisor to UN in Afghanistan, who paid a visit to an
internally displaced person (IDP) camp, said: “This is Mazar’s
IDP camp number 65. A number of men are sitting outside the building
in a circle, We get off our UN cars and walk towards them. On the
left, a man in his seventies is crying bitterly. I ask our
translator to inquire from the men why he is crying. The response is
that he has lost his two grand-sons this morning and they (men) are
preparing for their funeral near the camp.”
She said: “We enter the camp. A strong smell fills the place. A
smell of bodies and human secretion. The place is so dark one can
hardly see. There is no light in the building, no electricity, no
fire and no candle. It makes me some time to distinguish between the
figures around. We enter the first opening on our right. The room
has no door, no window or even a curtain that can give its occupants
some privacy or protect them from extreme cold. It is freezing cold
despite my warm clothes, heavy coat and the woolen scarf. Two dead
children are lying in the middle of the room and a number of women
and children are sitting around them. I ask who the mother is. Our
translator asks and they point to a woman sitting on the left.
Unlike the grandfather, she is not crying. She looks at us blankly
as we all start at her. ‘Were the children sick?’”
The UN advisor said after some exchange between the translator and
the woman, he responded: “They were not sick. They died of cold.
Also because there was no food that keep the children and old people warm.”
Melek said: “I moved to the other room. I noticed suddenly that
the place is so quiet. I wondered how can it be when there are 150
families living in the building. A voice in me answered that perhaps
deep desolation has made the people silent.”
She said: “In the second room, nine people are sitting on the
cement floor of the room, a very sick teenager boy is lying on some
kind of sheeting with a quilt covering him. He looks at us as we
enter. He too, has the same kind of look as the mother who lost her
two kids. I am told he is sick. This is why he has the lone quilt
the family had. Five children are lying still near the wall with
their hands on their chests. They are shivering and look very
strange. For seconds, I cannot tell why they look so strange. Then
gradually it dawns on me. This is the very first time in my life I
see navy blue children. I have seen black children, white children,
yellow children, coffee-coloured children, but never navy-blue
children. And as we go from one room to another in the camp
building, where 150 drought-hit families live, we see more such
people.”
“The old man who was crying in the other building approached us
while holding a little boy in his lap. He stood in front of me and
started speaking in Dari. He was still crying. I found myself crying
too.” Our translator informed us that the old man wanted to tell
us that this was his only surviving grand-son and that he was afraid
of loosing him too.
Masoon Melek said: “This is just one tragedy from Mazar. There may
be more tragic scenes in Kabul, Herat, Kandahar, and Bamyan. Nearly
half a million internally displaced persons are there, who have no
shelter, no food, no clothing. And when they look at their children
for the last time before burying them, they may think, that one more
kilogram of flour or potatoes, a pair of shoes or a jacket may have
saved their children from death.”
Quoted from the newspaper “The News” – 29th January
2001 –
published in Pakistan.
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Afghan
News
3 January: Afghanistan’s
northern-based opposition struck a second blow in as many weeks
against the Taliban militia capturing a key district in central Ghor
province, an opposition spokesman said Tuesday.
4 January: The Afghan opposition on Monday confirmed it had lost the
strategic town of Yakawlang in the central province of Bamyan to the
Taliban after heavy fighting.
4 January: Seven Afghan refugee
children died at a camp near Peshawar as a cold wave swept the
region, camp residents and local authorities said.
9 January: The leader of Afghanistan’s ruling militia issued an
edict imposing the death penalty on any Afghan Muslim who converts
to Christianity or Judaism, an official radio report said on Monday.
11 January: The mortality rate among children under five in remote
villages of south and southeast of Qaiser district in southern
Faryab province of Afghanistan is 5,2 per 10.000 per day, says a
nutrition and mortality survey just finished by the Medecins
sans Frontieres (MSF) Belgium.
12 January: Afghanistan’s relentless drought is rapidly becoming a
famine judging by the condition of refugees pouring into Pakistan
every day, but still the donor community, especially Europe, seems
reluctant to help, UN officials said.
15 January: The frontlines in the northeastern Takhar
province of Afghanistan were relatively calm early Sunday, a day
after intense fighting between Afghan opposition forces and the
ruling Taliban militia, resistance officials said.
15 January: The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) on
Sunday decided to cut food distribution to 22.000 widows and their
families and disabled Afghans, aggravating problems for Kabul’s
impoverished population.
17 January: Pakistan will implement UN sanctions on Taliban on its
side of the border, Pakistan Foreign Secretary Inamul Haq said on
Tuesday.
18 January: Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar Sunday rejected
allegations by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan that his troops
killed civilians after recapturing Yakawlang town in the central
Afghanistan province of Bamyan.
20 January: Shattered by a devastating drought and a protracted
civil war, 18.000 new Afghan refugees fled their homeland and
arrived in Pakistan in just the last week.
23 January: Afghanistan’s anti-Taliban groups have recaptured
Yakawlang district after fierce fighting overnight combat,
opposition and Taliban sources said Monday.
24 January: Afghanistan’s armed resistance and the ruling Taliban
militia engaged in intense artillery duels north of Kabul on Tuesday
in what one opposition commander said could be the prelude to an
attack.
24 January: The fifth explosion in a week, a bomb planted outside
the vacant Iranian embassy, has shaken the Afghan capital, residents
said on Tuesday.
25 January: Afghanistan’s northern-based opposition overran
Taliban troops to capture several villages in two northern provinces
on Wednesday, an opposition spokesman said.
27 January: The number of new Afghan refugees who have sought
UN assistance in Pakistan has soared through the 150.000 mark with
no end in sight despite the closure of the border, a UN official
said Friday.
28 January: Heavy fighting erupted north of Kabul on Saturday with
anti-Taliban groups claiming to have captured a number of positions
from the ruling Islamic militia in a pre-dawn attack.
29 January: Former Afghan defense minister and opposition
commander Ahmed Shah Masood has favored elections in Afghanistan,
asking the Taliban to test their popularity through democratic
process.
1 February: More than 110 Afghans died of cold in displacement camps
near the western city of Herat this week, UN said Wednesday.
2 February: Taliban have said opium poppy cultivation will never be
allowed in Afghanistan again.
2 February: Three explosions occurred in Kabul on Thursday,
shattering windows but causing no casualties, witnesses said.
3 February: Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban have expressed their
readiness for holding talks with the opposition Northern Alliance,
reports VOA.
3 February: The death toll in makeshift camps for internally
displaced Afghans in Herat, western Afghanistan, due to severe cold
rose to 504 on Thursday following the death of another 22 persons
Wednesday night.
4 February: Both sides in Afghanistan’s bitter civil war rejected
a UN appeal on Saturday to call a truce to help their countrymen,
who have been driven from their homes and are dying daily in squalid
camps.
7 February: The World Bank on Tuesday joined the swell of
appeals seeking emergency aid for Afghanistan, warning that war and
drought were driving the country towards famine.
15 February: Afghan opposition forces captured the key central city
of Bamyan from the Taliban overnight Wednesday in a major blow to
the ruling militia, officials said.
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The
Swiss Foundation Terre
des hommes is working
on both sides of the frontlines in Afghanistan and keeping strict
neutrality in the conflict.
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Published
by:
Terre des hommes Liaison Delegation Office
P.O.Box 729 UT
Peshawar
Islamic Republic of Pakistan
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All information from: “The News”
published in Pakistan
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