Emergency aid reaches Afghans

Social justice news
January 2002

"Bishop of Beijing" dies of kidney failure
CCHD spotlights poverty in America
Drought/9-11 slowdown add to Central America's woes
Emergency aid reaches Afghans
Hunger/homelessness up sharply in major cities
UN launches website on freshwater issues

Emergency aid reaches Afghans
Emergency aid is reaching the Afghan people despite continued lawlessness along major humanitarian supply routes, representatives from Catholic Relief Services (CRS) reported. The CRS representatives said CRS-supported relief convoys are crossing without incident from Peshawar, Pakistan, to Kabul, via Jalalabad, though looting is rampant in Afghanistan's rural areas. The agency's initial distributions of wheat inside the Afghan provinces of Ghazni, Kabul, Logar and Wardak are reaching 30,000 Afghan families (about 150,000 people).

"Because of the dire circumstances, there's great potential for chaos at these distributions," said Paul Butler, Catholic Relief Services Emergency Coordinator for the Afghan relief program. "There is desperation among certain groups, and there has been a breakdown in law and order over the past month inside Afghanistan. But the supplies are reaching the people who need them, which is very satisfying," Butler said.

The CRS assessment team—visiting on behalf of the Caritas Network, an international confederation of 146 Catholic charities—met with CRS' local partners in Kabul, including three women religious and two men religious who had remained in the city during the bombing campaign, working in hospitals and schools.

The CRS team noted that while its partnering aid organizations are meeting immediate food needs in the region, many warehouse facilities have been damaged in the bombings, leaving supplies exposed. As a result, new structures will be required to protect relief items during the winter months.

Butler said the ongoing relief distributions are additionally serving as an occasion for Afghans to express their new freedoms. "Some women are showing their faces in public," he said. "They are engaging men in conversation and, in general, becoming more active outside of the home, including working on the relief distributions and applying for other jobs at schools, hospitals and in the government."

Afghans in Kabul and in areas north of the city were very welcoming of Americans, the CRS team noted. But those same individuals interviewed by CRS staff feared, in the long-term, they would be abandoned and urged America's development assistance.

While emergency phase activities will continue to prioritize food, winterization materials and medicines, a long-term development program will be needed, the CRS assessment team reported. Catholic Relief Services' local partner in Kabul pointed out that education and school reconstruction would be a top priority after the emergency.

"Hospital workers and teachers have gone unpaid for months, and, in general, the health and education sectors have been neglected for years," Butler said, adding that agricultural assistance will also be critical, as a persistent drought has devastated millions of Afghan farmers.

Catholic Relief Services hopes to raise $50 million to feed and house Afghan refugees in Pakistan through the winter, to help the Afghan people in the post-war recovery in Afghanistan, and to support countries throughout the world affected by the current instability.

For more information:
Catholic Relief Services

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