U.N.-AFGHANISTAN: U.N. Seeks Funds to Prevent Disaster

By Thalif Deen Reprint | | Print |

Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS, May 3 1996 (IPS) - The United Nations says it desperately needs funds to pull Afghanistan from the brink of human disaster.

“It is the world’s largest forgotten tragedy,” Martin Barber of the Kabul-based U.N. Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Assistance told reporters Thursday of Afghanistan. “We need 50 million dollars urgently,” to continue humanitarian assistance and other programmes.

Kabul, with a population of one million, is home to 25,000 widows who have lost their husbands since civil war broke out in 1979, he said. The country has also not recovered from the devastation caused by the 14-year Soviet occupation which ended in Feb. 1989.

Barber said the United Nations had received only about 30 percent of the targeted 124 million dollars needed annually as humanitarian assistance for the embattled country.

As part of the humanitarian assistance programme, the United Nations has also launched a de-mining project under which 3,000 highly trained Afghans are clearing mines every day. Barber said the United Nations has deployed 100 specially trained dogs to sniff-out land mines.

“They are just fantastic,” he said, of the project that is funded by Germany.

By the end of 1994, a total of 109,754 mines had been cleared, while 215,764 unexploded ordnance devices were destroyed, and 54 million square metres of land were made safe. In a report released last year, the United Nations estimated there were 10 million mines strewn across Afghanistan. The vast majority were scattered randomly, with no records indicating their precise locations.

Fierce fighting continues between the military forces of President Burhanuddin Rabbani and members of Taliban bent on ousting him. Other factions involved in the conflict include the Harakat-i-Islami, the Ittehad-i-Islami, and the National Islamic Front.

Barber admitted that new land mines have been laid during the ongoing conflict.

“We very much regret this and have told the faction leaders about it,” he said. But the scale of mine-laying was “tiny”, he said, compared to the already existing mines.

Barber said the people of Afghanistan have repeatedly asked him, “What have we done to deserve this fate? After all, we helped to bring the Cold War to an end.”

U.N. Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali says in a report released last month that the main reason for the continued hostilities is the “uncompromising stance of the (warring ) parties.”

The Taliban is determined to remove Rabbani from power, he says. “Equally determined has been the resolve of the government to maintain its control of Kabul at all costs.”

“The most disturbing cause for concern is what appears to be active preparations by the government and the Taliban for a major battle for the control of Kabul,” Boutros-Ghali says.

The two factions are locked in a military stalemate, and indiscriminate exchanges of rockets and missiles and aerial bombardment have been reported almost on a daily basis.

The United Nations is also tackling the huge refugee problem. About half the six million Afghans who left the country during the Soviet occupation have gone back to their homes.

“Afghanistan is the poorest country in the world — outside of Africa,” Barber said. “And still people want to get back to it.”

During the heavy snow and below-zero temperatures last winter, the United Nations provided food aid to more 300,000 Afghans. The harsh winter compounded the inadequate shelter and the shortage of water and fuel. There are still some 1.6 million Afghan refugees in Iran and about one million in Pakistan, Barber said.