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U.S. sends aid for victims of Afghanistan's devastating drought

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February 8, 2001 

PESHAWAR-(AP) - A plane loaded with U.S. emergency supplies for drought-hit Afghans dying of cold and hunger arrived Wednesday in the Pakistani border city of Peshawar.

The chartered aircraft brought 500 tents, 5,000 blankets and 500 rolls of plastic sheeting, William B. Milam, the U.S. ambassador to Pakistan told reporters. The U.S. has also given dlrs 50,000 for the purchase of tents and water jugs locally, he said.

"It's a donation from the new administration in response to the plight of Afghan people suffering from hardship of drought and conflict," Milam said. "This aid is not for any party or group."

In recent weeks, the United Nations has made repeated pleas for help from the international community for Afghanistan's drought victims.

The World Bank also appealed to the donor countries on Tuesday to rush emergency help for Afghanistan.

"A major human tragedy is gripping Afghanistan," John Wall, World Bank's country director for Pakistan and Afghanistan said. "The situation appears to have all the ingredients of a famine."

Last week, more than 500 people - almost half of them children - died from the cold in camps in Afghanistan's western Herat province, where temperature often drops as low as minus 25 Celsius (minus 13 Fahrenheit).

About 80,000 people are living in miserable circumstances in six U.N. established camps in Herat. Some 155,000 new Afghan refugees are living in Pakistan, while thousands more are stranded on Afghanistan's northern border with Tajikistan.

The U.N. estimates the drought has affected about 12 million of Afghanistan's 20 million people. Of those, 4 million are seriously affected.

Milam said the aid is a symbol of U.S. response to the disaster.

On Thursday, another aircraft will depart for Herat loaded with 250 tents, 10,000 blankets, 480 water jugs and medicines, he said. Another airlift to Herat is scheduled for next week.

The United States, the largest donor to war-battered Afghanistan, will also give dlrs 2.1 million for relief work in the northern Faryab and Takhar provinces, he said. Washington has already donated 72,000 tons of wheat for the drought victims which is being distributed by the World Food Program - the U.N. food body.

Afghanistan, one of the poorest countries shattered by two decades of civil war, has seen its problems compounding because of the drought.

The United Nations' tougher sanctions, imposed on Afghanistan last month, also have added to the sense of desperation and isolation of the Afghans.

The United States and Russia spearheaded sanctions on Afghanistan's Taliban rulers, in an attempt to force them to surrender Saudi fugitive Osama bin Laden.

Washington accuses bin Laden of masterminding the bombing of its embassies in east Africa in August 1998. He is also a prime suspect in the bombing of USS Cole in which 17 American sailors were killed.

The Taliban, who rule 95 percent of Afghanistan, have refused to bow to the U.N. pressure. They are mostly Sunni Muslims and Pashtun, Afghanistan's majority ethnic group, and are fighting their northern-based opposition in an attempt to capture entire Afghanistan.

The opposition is made up of predominantly ethnic and religious minorities and controls the remaining five percent of Afghanistan.