Mr. Chairman and Members of the Committee, thank you for inviting me here for this extremely important and timely hearing on the humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan.
Afghanistan today is a country in crisis, a crisis that predates the events of September l1th by many years. Three years of drought, 22 years of conflict, and five years of brutal Taliban misrule, have brought untold suffering to millions of people.
The long drought has caused the near-total failure of rain-fed crops in 18 of 29 provinces. Only ten to twelve percent of the country is arable, and much of that land cannot be used due to mines and the fighting that has raged about the country since the Soviet invasion of 1979. Thirty percent of Afghanistan's irrigation infrastructure has been damaged or fallen into disrepair, rendering about a half of the irrigated lands unusable.
In 1979, Afghanistan was able to feed itself. Currently, there is a food deficit of nearly two million metric tons (MT) of food. The Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) estimates that the country will only produce 10,000 of the 240,000 MT of seed that it will need for next year's planting. We know the reason: most of the seed has already been eaten by farmers who fear they may not survive until the next crop.
Approximately 12 million people, more than half of the country's inhabitants, have been affected by the drought. About 1.5 million people are internally displaced as a result of the fighting and the drought, 80 percent of which were displaced prior to September 11. Many, many thousands more are unable to move, due to illness, hunger, injury, or disability.
The World Food Program (WFP), which distributes most of the food to Afghanistan through nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), estimates that food stocks in the country are critically short and they are aggressively seeking to move food into the country. NGOs and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) have been able to maintain their programs in many parts of the country through the efforts of thousands of dedicated local Afghan staff, many of whom have worked for these organizations for decades.
Still, we believe that 1.5 million Afghans risk starvation by winter's end and that between five and seven million Afghans face critical food shortages and are partially or fully dependent on outside assistance for survival.
One of the first actions I took as the Administrator of USAID was to order an assessment conducted by a team from our Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance, working with the State Department's Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration. The team's conclusion was inescapable: Afghanistan was "on the verge of widespread and precipitous famine."
Based on this and other information, and with the support of Secretary Powell, I ordered a Disaster Assistance Response Team (DART) to the region. They arrived in June and have been operating in the region ever since. Since then, we have focused on Afghanistan's humanitarian needs as never before. Through closer cooperation with the United Nations (UN) specialized agencies and the NGOs with whom we work, we have been able to target our efforts more precisely toward those who need it most.
The United States, of course, has been monitoring and helping the people in Afghanistan for many years. In the fiscal year that just ended and in the few days since, the U.S. Government donated $184 million in humanitarian assistance for the Afghan people. This includes a variety of programs run by the Department of Agriculture, the Department of State and USAID.
Our country has long been the largest donor to the World Food Program's Afghan humanitarian assistance program. Approximately, 85 percent of the WFP food aid in the pipeline now -- 45,000 MT stored in Pakistan and another 165,000 MT on the way comes directly from the United States.
The President has now added another $320 million of new money to this humanitarian effort.
According to our DART, the conditions in many areas of Afghanistan are well beyond the "pre-famine" stage. As best we can judge, the situation will only get worse with the coming winter. Nearly three-quarters of the at-risk population live in the northern half of Afghanistan.
While most people comprehend famine as a dramatic increase in death rates due to starvation and hunger-related illnesses, there are a number of famine indicators that relief experts look for when reliable information on death rates or malnutrition levels is not readily available. These indicators include the following:
In Afghanistan, NGOs, UN agencies, and the media are reporting evidence of nearly every one of these indicators. The Afghan people are tough, seasoned by many years of war and conflict. But many have exhausted their ability to cope. Their resources are exhausted, and their animals are dead, sold or eaten. They enter this crisis in an extraordinarily weakened state. Apart from the many sick, weak and disabled people, the most vulnerable population lives in remote regions, often at very high altitude, cut off from most efforts to provide food or seed.
Based on WFP's vulnerability assessment map (VAM), the nutritional crisis appears to be most severe in the northern half of the country where the drought has hit hardest three years of drought versus one year in other areas of the country-and where most of the internally displaced population is located. We are now seeing whole communities on the move in the north, and many villages abandoned altogether. Although precise statistics are hard to come by, many families have resorted to desperate measures, selling their draft animals, mixing their food with inedible substances, selling off their last possessions, selling their children, or marrying off their daughters to strangers at an abnormally young age.
While we have not been able to collect data on food prices fully, there is some anecdotal evidence that prices have risen rapidly in rural areas, as much as 200 percent higher than prices in urban markets, even as family income has plummeted. Most alarmingly, there is evidence of abnormally high death rates in some parts of the north.
President Bush's strategy to deal with this vast and complicated humanitarian crisis is designed to accomplish five critical objectives:
Our primary goal, of course, is to prevent as many people from dying as possible. Winter is fast approaching, so time is clearly of the essence. We must get as much food as possible into the country as soon as possible, particularly in the northern half of the country. This means doubling the amount of tonnage going in, at the very least, from approximately 25,000 MT per month to 52,000 MT. We are opening all possible pipelines to move food, seed, and other emergency commodities and health kits into the country to increase the volume of aid. Health care, nutritional surveillance, and water and sanitation programs will help us to stop epidemics of communicable disease which can wipe out whole populations whose immune systems have been weakened by hunger and malnutrition. Blankets and shelter material are vital to prevent hypothermia in the highlands where temperatures drop to minus 40 degrees Fahrenheit in the winter.
There are three common causes of widespread population movements: economic collapse which causes people to move in search of jobs and economic opportunities; famine which causes people to move in search of food; and insecurity which causes people to move in search of safety. In famines, when people have sold all their assets for food and have run out of options, many leave their villages to find food or work. From the experience of other famines, we know that as many as 50 percent will die along the way or in famine-induced refugee or internally displaced persons (IDP) camps. So we must do everything we can to encourage people who are likely to move because of food insecurity to stay in their villages by moving as much food as possible into the villages and rural areas. The million or more refugees and IDPs that the UN High Commissioner for Refugees has predicted has not materialized thus far. One of our objectives is to see that it never does.
We also need to do what we can to drive down the cost of food, so that ordinary Afghan citizens can buy what they and their families need. People die of hunger in famines because of the skyrocketing price of food and sometimes a collapse of family income and the depletion of family assets. Food is nearly always available in famines, families simply cannot afford to buy it. The best way to counter this is to address both the supply and demand sides of the equation. On the supply side, we can sell significant amounts of food to local merchants in order to bring down prices and discourage hoarding. These merchants have their own means of protecting their goods even in the midst of general insecurity, and the incentive of profits to be made ensures that the food will reach the markets. Experience from other famine situations has shown this to be a particularly effective strategy, especially in smaller markets where even limited amounts can have a significant effect on prices. On the demand side, we can undertake cash for work and other programs to raise family incomes so that people can purchase the food that is available on the markets.
It will be necessary to do our utmost to keep U.S. Government humanitarian assistance out of the hands of the Taliban or other armed groups. Part of our strategy to do so is linked to our second goal, limiting population movements. By moving as much food as possible to remote villages and towns where most Afghans live, we can help discourage people from concentrating in refugee or IDP camps, where the risk of manipulation by the Taliban and their supporters is comparatively high.
Where the security of the food is an issue in IDP camps, we should avoid distributing dry rations. Wet feeding programs in which prepared food is distributed directly to beneficiaries, rather than uncooked or dry rations, should be the norm wherever possible, even for adults. Cooked food spoils quickly, is heavier to move and harder to store, making it more difficult to steal and more likely that the intended beneficiaries will receive their rations. An expatriate presence is essential to running a cooked food program in IDP camps, a presence which is not possible under current circumstances.
Right now the collapsing discipline of the Taliban as an organization makes the return of expatriate relief workers problematic, many of whom left the country due to Taliban harassment of relief agencies last spring and summer.
By opening as many food pipelines into the country as possible, not only will we be able to move more food quickly to where it is needed, we will also minimize the distance any given aid convoy must travel to reach its destination, thereby reducing the opportunity for diversion. We will also make it our policy that only limited amounts of food will be warehoused in areas the Taliban controls so as not to create attractive targets for looting. Wherever possible, warehouses will be by-passed and food will be delivered directly to beneficiaries. In October, the Taliban took over two WFP warehouses, one of which still remains under Taliban control. In addition, numerous security incidents are being reported to us by humanitarian agencies of harassment and looting by Taliban forces, although many will not speak out publicly against these abuses for fear of putting their local staff on the ground in jeopardy.
Finally, we will also implement a humanitarian public information campaign so the Afghan people know aid is on the way. This will have the dual effect of helping to discourage further population movements, and will provide a check against diversion or manipulation of aid since people will know what they are supposed to receive through this information effort.
The constant conflict that has plagued Afghanistan has kept people from rebuilding damaged infrastructure. We intend to structure our relief programs so that they can begin this long-overdue process of small-scale reconstruction at the community level where security conditions are relatively stable. We call this spot reconstruction. Our food-for-work programs, for example, will focus on practical sectors. Distribution of seed for the winter wheat crop or even small-scale repairs of irrigation systems and wells can make a profound difference in the country's recovery from this crisis. If enough crops can be planted and livestock rebuilt, next year will not have to resemble this one.
The President and the Secretary have made very clear that the Afghan people are not our enemies. The President said on October 4 when he announced his new $320 million initiative for the Afghan people: "We are a compassionate nation .... We will work with the U.N. agencies, such as the World Food Program, and work with private volunteer organizations to make sure this assistance gets to the people. We will make sure that not only the folks in Afghanistan who need help get help, but we will help those who have fled to neighboring countries to get help as well."
With the new funds the President has announced, we are redoubling our efforts to get relief to those who need it most. Despite the events of September 11, and the fact that we have no diplomatic relations with the Taliban, and despite their refusal to hand over bin Laden and dismantle al Qaeda, our humanitarian assistance policies will not change. Food aid distribution will be based on need. The President has made this very clear.
Accomplishing our humanitarian objectives under the current circumstances is a huge task, but I am confident that, if we follow the President's strategy, we can save many, many lives and help Afghanistan begin to rebuild itself. Let me assure you that we at the Agency for International Development are fully committed to doing everything we can to work with you in Congress, the other Executive Branch agencies, and the international community to accomplish these objectives.
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Source: U.S. Government Website |