Dateline ACT

Afghanistan 01/01

A vulnerable target

Geneva, September 18, 2001

Increasingly Afghanistan looks a likely target for an American military action following last week’s terrorist attacks on New York City’s World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

It is difficult to imagine a more vulnerable population than Afghanis, who already face a major humanitarian crisis, as two ACT communicators who visited Afghanistan in July discovered.

Extensive travel and interviews with aid workers and those coping withthe drought and attendant social and political crises in both cities andrural areas paint an unnerving - at times quietly horrifying -- portrait ofa nation teetering on the edge of disaster.

Civilians caught
- between war, drought & closed borders

ACT in Afghanistan
- more on relief activities

Water, water
- water levels are down by 20 meters

Women
- photo feature: There, yet not there

You can see it in the eyes of the malnourished children at Mashlak camp outside of Herat, a dusty, windy, unforgiving place where large numbers ofvillagers from eastern Afghanistan have come as a place of last resort.

"We've lost everything and have had to come here," said one villager from Ghamai, recalling a one-week journey to the camp with dozens of other villagers and now living in small, cramped mud-constructed shelters.

You can see it in the sun-beaten hands of villagers in the Karokh district outside of Herat as they visitors the now useless kernels of dried wheat -brittle to the touch in the hot, windy air.

"This is the second year of drought and we've lost all the crops," said one elderly villager who, like others, has also had to sell his livestock at a loss.

You can see it in the hot, dusty streets of Kabul, a capitol city oncenostalgically remembered for its tree-line streets and gardens, and now aspent, tired place utterly in ruins - a city riddled by bullets holes and explosions following years of civil war and now a destination for desperate, fearful persons with nowhere else to go.

"What is the use of just bread," asked one elderly woman, crying and pleading to a group of visitors visiting a small, dark compound near theformer Soviet embassy, where she and some 4,000 others live in tight,cramped quarters. "We have no jobs, no schooling, no health care."

You can see it, too, along the chaotic crowded border with Pakistan, inwhich desperate Afghanis try their best to make a crossing, only to bebeaten by the authorities.

Those who claim that Afghanistan is suffering from perhaps the worsehumanitarian crisis in the world are in no way exaggerating the extent ofthe problem.

Now, following the increased tension in the region, international aidworkers have left Afghanistan. The first reports of crucial fooddistributions being discontinued are already reaching the outside worldalong with reports of some people packing up an leaving the capital Kabul.

"People have been whittled down," said Simon Richards of Christian Aidalready back in July. "They are much more desperate this year. They arehanging by a thread."

What is most striking to Richards and to others who have witnessedhumanitarian crises in other parts of the world is the way the crisis inAfghanistan is so multi-dimensional: it cannot be explained in isolated,component parts of drought or war or religious extremism: all of theelements play against each other.

To generalize to an extreme degree: the 1979 Soviet invasion begat war,destroying the country's infrastructure and leading eventually tointernecine conflict that led to the rise of the Taliban, whose repressiveIslamic strictures have fundamentally reshaped society - but have leftlittle room for any kind of systematic government-led response to thegrowing drought or other pressing social problems.

The result? The nation's educated class is fleeing, leaving a country run byuntrained and unskilled authorities who are wary of outside assistance yetalso, paradoxically, dependent on it. Outside non-governmental organizations(NGOs) are now providing the country's only social safety net.

"Once we had everything: schools, universities, educated boys and girls,"said one aid worker.

"Now kids are just on the street playing with their hands, doing nothing."

Yet despite the extreme cost of Taliban rule - especially the strictures against women, who by all accounts have suffered the most dearly under theTaliban - aid workers in the ACT network, nearly all of them Afghani Muslims, say they remain dedicated to their work and if anything, feel more than ever a redoubled commitment to what they do.

"Our goal remains clear: to work with the poor of Afghanistan," said anotheraid worker with ACT. "If it means growing a beard and wearing a turban, atleast that allows me to work with the poor."

Text: Chris Herlinger (CWS) & Photos: Nils Carstensen (ACT International)

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