The Sydney Morning Herald The quality of mercy: food drops in minefields Date: 10/10/2001
Aid agencies say the US relief operation is dangerous and cynical, Christopher Kremmer reports. The American food aid drops over Afghanistan have been criticised as a potentially lethal stop-gap to humanise its bombing campaign. Aid agencies operating inside the country are concerned that some of the ration packs being dropped along with US bombs may be landing in unmapped minefields. "When the food lands, these desperately hungry Afghan people will simply rush towards it. Women and children are the most vulnerable," said Alhaj Fazel, a spokesman for the respected de-mining organisation OMAR. At best, say aid workers, the nightly drops of 37,000 ready-to-eat packs of dried, meatless gruel are inadequate. At worst, they are a cynical stunt. "This is not a humanitarian operation. It is part of a military campaign designed to gather international approval of the attacks ... It is virtually useless and may even be dangerous," said the medical aid group Medicins Sans Frontieres in a statement issued in Paris. The bright yellow one-kilogram plastic food packets stamped with the Stars and Stripes flutter down to earth from American C-17 military transport planes that have flown from the Ramstein air base in Germany. A silhouette image of a man eating from a spoon gives illiterate villagers the idea that this is food, while a message in several languages - none of them local - explains: "This is a food gift from the people of the United States of America." Moist towelettes are provided to assist recipients in freshening up after their meal of bean salad, barley stew and bread. Before September 11, some 3.5 million Afghans rocked by war, drought and Taliban maladministration were dependent on UN-delivered food. The food drops are occurring in what US officials say are zones for displaced people in southern and eastern Afghanistan. But aid workers say the air drops take no account of the landmine infestation which makes so much of the countryside so dangerous. The unintentional parallels with an earlier Afghan war are eerie. Soviet forces which invaded the country in 1979 were infamous for scattering shiny metallic landmines across the countryside. The mines, which sparkled gaily in the sunshine and exploded if picked up, attracted Afghan children like magnets. The United Nations has announced the indefinite suspension of food deliveries because of the threat the US-led attacks pose to its staff. Some aid agencies are in a quandary about how to respond to the US aid. "It's a very welcome initiative, but at the same time what are we going to see for the longer term?" said Patrick Fuller, a spokesman for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. But others, such as the British-based Oxfam agency, are publicly opposing the food-plus-bombs strategy. "It's certainly not something that we can applaud. Untargeted food drops are one of the worst delivery strategies. They're prohibitively expensive and should only be used as a last resort," said Oxfam's Pakistan-based spokesman, Alex Renton. Oxfam says 10 times as much food could be trucked in daily if the bombing was stopped. "The strikes have to stop, obviously. Our politicians must make it possible for aid workers to help the needy," Mr Renton says. With only a six-week window of opportunity to build up food stocks before winter, aid workers believe the military campaign threatens to create a humanitarian catastrophe. The Red Cross is echoing the concern. It says its 48 clinics inside Afghanistan will run out of essential medicines within two weeks unless deliveries can resume. On one issue the aid agencies are unanimous, insisting the Pakistan Government open its border to allow Afghans to reach help, if real help cannot reach them. This material is subject to copyright and any unauthorised use, copying or mirroring is prohibited. http://www.smh.com.au/news/0110/10/text/world8.html ************************************************************************* This posting is provided to the individual members of this group without permission from the copyright owner for purposes of criticism, comment, scholarship and research under the "fair use" provisions of the Federal copyright laws and it may not be distributed further without permission of the copyright owner, except for "fair use." -- Leftlink - Australia's Broad Left Mailing List mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Archived at http://www.cat.org.au/lists/leftlink/ Sponsored by Melbourne's New International Bookshop Subscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?Body=subscribe%20leftlink Unsubscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?Body=unsubscribe%20leftlink
