Reuters
November 14
he United Nations dispatched the first shipment of aid Wednesday from ex-Soviet Uzbekistan to northern Afghanistan , where more than three million people are in danger of starving.
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A barge-load of food, blankets, clothes and footwear left the southern Uzbek port of Termez for an 11-mile journey upstream to the Afghan town of Hairaton after Uzbek authorities gave the long-awaited green light for the operation to begin. The border has been closed since 1998, when the Taliban overran the ancient town of Mazar-i-Sharif. Opposition forces retook the town last week at the start of an advance that swept them into Kabul Tuesday. |
``The last information I have is that the barge had reached Hairaton and was being unloaded manually,'' Michael Huggins, spokesman for the World Food Program (WFP), told Reuters.
The aid was dispatched across the Amu Darya river -- known to the ancient Greeks as the Oxus -- by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), WFP and the U.N. children's agency UNICEF .
``The aid will target the most vulnerable and needy people of northern Afghanistan,'' U.N. representative Richard Conroy said in a statement released outside the Termez port.
The United Nations believes up to 3.4 million people, about half the population of northern Afghanistan, now depend on external assistance for survival.
``Of these, half a million are internally displaced and over 200,000 are living in drought-ridden pockets of high food insecurity and will require food assistance for the next nine months,'' the U.N. statement said.
DISTRIBUTION MAIN PROBLEM
Huggins said the aid would be temporarily stored in Hairaton to be shipped to Mazar-i-Sharif.
``Aid distribution is currently the main hurdle,'' Huggins said. ``But we will ensure that every step is made properly.''
Wednesday's cargo included 50 tons of wheat flour, 2,000 blankets, 10,000 winter jackets, 1,300 pairs of boots and 10,000 collapsible water containers.
Huggins said the three barges the UN had at its disposal in Termez were be enough to deliver daily 600-800 tons of aid to northern Afghanistan.
He said about 1,100 tons of aid had been stocked in Termez and 5,000 tons of food supplies purchased in neighboring Kazakhstan were on their way to the town.
Until now, aid agencies had to rely on Turkmenistan, another ex-Soviet Afghan neighbor, for deliveries to the area.
Russian border guards in neighboring Tajikistan said on Wednesday they had helped ship more than 170 tons of international humanitarian aid to Afghanistan over the last weeks.
Aid agencies have expressed hope that the Friendship Bridge, the main gateway between Uzbekistan and Afghanistan, will be opened in order to increase the flow of humanitarian aid to the impoverished country.
Uzbekistan has so far been silent on this. Officials have repeatedly stressed in the past that for security reasons the bridge would not be opened, even for aid supplies.