A rchive Date
[ 21-02-2005 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ Afghanistan ]
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[http://www.canoe.ca/CNEWSAttack011013/13_un-ap.html
U.N.: aid being kept from refugees
By TED ANTHONY - The Associated Press
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) - As thousands of Afghans stream toward Pakistan to flee American military strikes, the United Nations says "red tape and security concerns" are preventing aid workers from reaching border areas to help them.
The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees says it urgently is trying to build and supply fresh refugee camps along the 1,500-mile border that Pakistan shares with Afghanistan. But tight restrictions, broken promises and regional volatility are getting in the way.
On Friday, the United Nations expressed its "growing concern and frustration" over the obstacles.
"We are in a real race against time, and right now we are losing," U.N. High Commissioner Ruud Lubbers said Friday. "We are not receiving the support - in the region or internationally - that we need."
Pakistan - home to 2 million Afghan refugees, many already in long-term border settlements - is expecting a million more because of U.S. strikes. It is trying to balance the U.N. operations with its wariness about accepting additional people.
Its suggestion to relief agencies: Help them before they arrive.
"There should be less pressure on these people to cross the border and come to Pakistan," Foreign Ministry spokesman Riaz Mohammad Khan said Saturday.
He said help should be provided to those who do enter Pakistan, but added: "As soon as the situation normalizes, we would expect them to return to their country."
Mohammed Naeem Khan, the commissioner for Afghan refugees in the border-area city of Peshawar, said Pakistan was ready to accommodate additional refugees but was waiting until U.N. food supplies arrived to augment tents and supplies.
"We will not open the border without getting food for these poor Afghans," he said.
Pakistan says its border to Afghanistan is closed, though refugees and border-area businessmen continue to cross with little restriction at frontier posts like Chaman.
Khan, the refugee commissioner, also urged the World Food Program to supply adequate food supplies quickly "so that Pakistan can open the border" to those seeking shelter.
But the UNHCR says Pakistani authorities are restricting field teams from reaching frontiers, monitoring refugee movement and offering help to new arrivals.
"Red tape and security concerns prevent UNHCR field teams from getting access to border areas," the agency said.
Government restrictions - including insistence that new camps be built in dry, remote and insecure tribal areas along the border - are making matters worse, the agency said. It said it was pressing for sites farther inland.
In Quetta, where the UNHCR offices were set afire by militant Islamic protesters on Monday, staffers have been unable to fully resume work in their offices - and, they say, been restricted from visiting field locations and monitoring border crossings.
The problems have "virtually stalled" preparations to help refugees in that area, the United Nations said. Meanwhile, it is asking Afghanistan's other neighbors to open their borders to refugees.
"We have been assured by the neighboring countries that they will allow people in, but they will only be given temporary asylum," said Yusuf Hassam, a UNHCR spokesman. Afghanistan is bordered by Pakistan, Iran, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and China.
Some shipments into Afghanistan are getting through, though.
A UNICEF convoy of blankets, water and medicine sent from Iran arrived in Herat in western Afghanistan on Friday, the agency said. Another convoy set out Friday from Quetta to deliver aid to southern and eastern Afghanistan.
And in Geneva, the international Red Cross said Friday it had flown medical supplies for 250,000 people into Pakistan for distribution across the border.
Another U.N. agency, the World Food Program, was facing trouble of a different sort Friday - from Afghanistan's ruling Taliban.
A convoy of relief supplies from Pakistan to Herat was still waiting just inside Pakistan on Friday night, trying to negotiate its way out of a "road taxes" insisted upon by the Taliban.
"We're trying to convince them that we don't pay taxes. We are exempt," spokesman Francesco Luna said.
Mike Sackett, the U.N. coordinator for Afghanistan, took a longer approach. He warned the world not to forget the help Afghanistan will need down the road - especially if a new government eventually has to reassemble the broken pieces of the country.
"The time is now upon us to plan for the longer term," he said. "This is the time to start thinking and planning for Afghanistan's peaceful future."
 World Fact Book (CIA)]
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