DISPATCHES: We need to help refugees of new war

"What is needed is a broader approach to solving the refugee crisis that includes a long-term plan for providing food in the region."

By: Hank Kalet
   The pictures are grim, but not unexpected.
   We’ve seen them before, the masses of mothers and fathers, sons and daughters trudging across the desert, through the mountains or valley, their lives piled atop carts pulled by donkeys, or packed tight in duffels and strapped to shoulders.
   Thousands have fled Afghanistan so far since Sept. 11, many of them setting out after the United States began bombing Afghanistan in retaliation for the terrorist attacks that leveled the World Trade Center and damaged the Pentagon.
   The stream of refugees is exacerbating an already dire situation, one in which hunger and disease is sure to fester and grow.
   I don’t want to imply that the U.S. bombing raids are to blame for the refugee crisis. (As a pacifist, I cannot condone the indiscriminate use of military force, but I also cannot oppose what has been up until now a measured response of self-defense.) I also do not want to imply that we bear no culpability for the disaster. We, through our government, have endorsed the repressive Taliban regime, provided them with military aid and have shown little interest in the fate of the average Afghan. Therefore, we do bear some responsibility and should act in some way to make conditions better.
   Years of war and the Taliban government had left the Afghan economy in a shambles and made it impossible to respond adequately to the devastating drought that has starved the region for three years.
   Before Sept. 11, there were an estimated 4 million Afghan refugees in neighboring Pakistan and Iran, most of whom fled the repressive Taliban regime and the drought conditions.
   That number is on the rise, now, with the bombs disrupting what passes for daily life in the region and the Taliban tightening its control, according to news reports.
   In addition, circumstances are making it difficult for aid workers to distribute food to the drought-stricken Afghans. The United Nations World Food Program has been forced to truck food directly to remote villages rather than stockpiling in city centers because the Taliban has confiscated more than 6,000 tons the agency’s food in warehouses in Kabul and Kandahar, The New York Times reports.
   Something needs to be done and it needs to be done quickly.
   According to the U.S. Committee for Refugees, there are 5 million people inside Afghanistan who depend on international food aid for survival and they are "considering a more basic, but no less urgent matter: how to survive the coming winter."
   The committee, which advocates for displaced people around the globe, says the refugees will find their choices limited.
   "They can stay in their homes, where they may find themselves without food in a matter of days," Margaret Emery, Hiram Ruiz and Jeff Drumtra say in a committee report. "They can attempt to travel toward Pakistan or Iran, under threat of U.S. bombing raids and freezing temperatures in mountain passes. Or they can migrate to locations within Afghanistan, where they have heard that food is — or might become — available."
   In response to the refugee crisis, and in an effort to show its concern to the rest of the Muslim world, the Bush administration has been dropping food packages in delivering food via air drop. The air drops make some sense, but cannot go far enough to address the long-term crisis that is developing.
   The committee says that some food "will reach extremely hungry people who cannot be reached in any other way at this time."
   "Air drops are more expensive and usually less targeted to the neediest people than are other methods of food distribution," the committee says. "A certain percentage of food will become spoiled or unusable because of packaging that breaks on impact or gets lost, while the lack of distribution controls on the ground means that a certain percentage of food will not reach the intended recipients."
   Air drops present other problems, as well: the food packages can injure civilians by falling on them or into mined areas; the food can "trigger large-scale migration" to drop locations "resulting in population overcrowding, water shortages and health problems that might not have existed otherwise."
   What is needed is a broader approach to solving the refugee crisis that includes a long-term plan for providing food in the region.
   In the short term, we must expand our aid commitment. The $320 million pledged by the Bush administration is a good start, but needs to be better targeted to those in need. More of the money and food should be given to "regular aid convoys already in action," according to Doctors Without Borders, an international aid organization.
   In addition, a "humanitarian corridor" should be created to end what the Swiss-based humanitarian group Terre des Hommes has called "the deliberate confusion between military operations and humanitarian aid."
   In the long term, we need to restore stability to the region, both politically and economically, so that the stream of refugees can be stanched and the local population can begin providing for itself.
   Otherwise, we are likely to face a repeat of the crisis again and again, creating an atmosphere in which resentment of the West will continue to grow.
Hank Kalet is managing editor of The Cranbury Press. He can be reached via e-mail at [email protected]