Warlords claim their spoils of war


	January 9, 2002	atimes.com

Central Asia/Russia

Warlords claim their spoils of war
By Thalif Deen

NEW YORK - The United Nations is complaining that its humanitarian efforts in Afghanistan are being hampered by large-scale looting of food stocks by Afghan warlords.

"There is a need for rule of law in Afghanistan," UN spokesperson Fred Eckhard said on Monday, "No one can dispute that." UN humanitarian agencies have complained that "someone is taking the food intended for the people", said Eckhard.

These agencies include the World Food Program (WFP), the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF). Other groups involved in relief operations in Afghanistan include the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), Medicins Sans Frontieres (MSF) and Medicos del Mundo (MDM).

WFP spokesperson Waghdi Othman said that the Maslakh Camp - one of the single largest food distribution points in Afghanistan - has had "severe problems with security". He said that armed groups have repeatedly entered the camp, and also discouraged international aid groups from doing their humanitarian work.

Beginning ON Monday, he said, the WFP has started distributing food coupons to about 53,000 families, whose combined numbers represent about 78 percent of the population of Herat, in western Afghanistan.

The US Agency for International Development (USAID), which is cooperating with UN agencies in relief efforts, said last week that widespread hunger has been averted in Afghanistan. But the New York Times ON Friday quoted relief officials as saying that the United States was speaking too soon, offering a success story where solid proof is hard to find.

The Eastern Shura, a group of anti-Taliban warlords working closely with the US military, has been accused of hijacking four of six trucks loaded with rice that arrived from Pakistan last week. UNHCR spokesperson Atiqullah Mohamed said that there was no proper system of government in the province. "The mujahideen put force on us and take the food. They are looting," he added.

Last week, the United Nations complained about the increase in civilian deaths even as US-led coalition forces continued bombing eastern Afghanistan in their search for Taliban leader Mullah Muhammad Omar. Eric Falt, spokesperson for the UN Information Center in Kabul, said that Secretary-General Kofi Annan and his special representative in Afghanistan, Lakhdar Brahimi, have "renewed the UN's concern following an unconfirmed but credible report that the village of Niazi Kala was hit by a series of coalition forces air raids".

The village, with an estimated population of 250 people, was struck a number of times last week. During the bombing, five large compounds with living quarters inside were razed. "It appears all the inhabitants were buried under the rubble," Falt said. Falt said that Brahimi was very concerned and intends to take the first opportunity to discuss this with Hamid Karzai, head of the Interim Administration in Kabul, and also with US diplomats.

Professor Marc Herold of the University of New Hampshire, who has been keeping a rough tally of killings based on media and other reports, has estimated a total of more than 4,000 civilian deaths since the beginning of the air attacks against Afghanistan last October. The Pentagon has either routinely denied civilian deaths or justified the bombing by arguing that Taliban soldiers were hiding among the civilian population. The US Central Command has admitted that the Pentagon has not kept a count of civilian killings in Afghanistan.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other US officials have reiterated their confidence in the precision of US bombing as well as the soundness of the on-the-ground targeting intelligence that guides the aerial strikes.

UN and media reports from Afghanistan, however, suggest that US war planners in some cases have been misled into aiming their precision ordnance at the political, business, or ethnic rivals of their local target-spotters rather than at legitimate terrorist facilities.

(Inter Press Service)