December 2001/
January 2002

Views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily of the AFSC.

Delivering Aid in Time of War

Doug Hostetter, a Mennonite who lived and worked in Vietnam in the 1970s and has been on staff at AFSC and the Fellowship of Reconciliation, presently is active with a variety of peace and justice organizations in Evanston, IL. He traveled to Afghanistan this fall to deliver aid to communities in Takhar Province of northern Afghanistan. Sponsors of this trip--Help the Afghan Children, Inc, (HTACI), the American Friends Service Committee, the Mennonite Central Committee, and the Muslim Peace Fellowship--have all contributed funds for this emergency effort to get food to desperately needy children and families before the onset of winter. The United Nations Development Program, in an October 8, 2001, report, estimated that already 70% of the people of Afghanistan are undernourished, and that one child in four will not survive to the age of five. The following is gleaned from Hostetter's reports from the field and letters home. We have included details about cost and composition of this aid, and about logistics, in order that readers may compare  the complexity and effectiveness of this small-scale relief effort with the air drops currently utilized by US forces. All of the photographs that accompany this article are Doug Hostetter's.

The first trucks of our convoy after they crossed the border. Doug Hostetter at right

I am traveling to Afghanistan in a five-person delegation organized by Help the Afghan Children, Inc., an American organization, founded and directed by Suraya Sadeed, an Afghan-American who has been assisting women and children in all areas of Afghanistan since 1993. Our mission is to purchase food and blankets in Tajikistan and take them across the border. We have just completed arrangements for purchase and shipping of 239 tons of food for internally displaced persons in northern Afghanistan. We have purchased 175 tons of wheat, 36 tons of sugar, and 28 tons of cooking oil for a total cost, including packaging and delivery, of $116,000. This food will be divided into 3600 family packets each of which contains: 50 Kg. wheat, 10 Kg sugar, and 8 liters (kg) of cooking oil. This is estimated as the amount of food necessary to sustain a family of seven for one month. Each family packet will cost $32.22 for purchase and delivery.

By comparison, the US-dropped Humanitarial Daily Ration packets cost the US taxpayers $4 each to manufacture, and $75 to deliver.

US air strikes on Taliban positions near Dasht-e Qal'eh

Travel to Afghanistan with relief supplies is extremely difficult right now because the the intensified military activity in this area. The destruction to the civilian population is incalculable, but we do know that last week seven staff and students of HTACI were killed. In Kabul, the chief pediatrician of the HTACI Clinic and the internist and a registered nurse were all killed in their homes last week. US bombs also took the lives of four HTACI students in Jalalabad.

After going through the four Russian check points (the Russians are the military presence at the Tajik-Afghan border), crossing the border at the Amu Darya River on the pontoon boat was not that difficult. That one tractor-powered, cable-pulled, pontoon boat was the only land crossing from the north into Northern Alliance-controlled territory. The river crossing was only a couple of kilometers from the Taliban front lines, and massive US bombing was taking place on a ridge a few miles away. The river at that point is about a mile wide, and the pontoon boat is capable of carrying only one 10- to 15-ton truck, or two smaller vehicles, at a time, plus a handful of passengers. ACTED (Agency for Technical Co-operation and Development, a French NGO and the only one to remain in northern Afghanistan after the UN and other large relief organizations had left for security reasons) sent a vehicle to take us from the river to their hostel in Kahwaja Bahawudin, a one-hour drive to the east. ACTED was a tremendous source of information on the concentrations of internally displaced persons in the area that were in need of food. They had surveyed all of the IDP communities in the area and had complete lists of family units in each community. They lent us their lists as well as some of their local staff to assist in the distribution.

The delegation crossing the Amu Darya River on the only ferry crossing the border between Tajikistan and Afghanistan

ACTED was a great host, and offered us what space they had available, but they were already overrun by 31 international journalists. We had one 9 x 12 foot room so most of us were in sleeping bags on the floors of various hallways. Most of the journalists were in tents in the courtyard, and all of us shared the several outdoor toilets and the one "shower room" with a wood-heated bucket of well water for bathing. [This from a later bulletin: I just got off the phone with Suraya Sadeed, who led our delegation and stayed an extra week after I returned. She reported that the two French reporters and a French photographer who lived with us at the ACTED compound in Kawja Bahauddin were killed the week after I left. They had been trying to drive from Northern Afghanistan to Kabul. They slept in a tent just outside of the door of the staff room we slept in. They were so friendly and so young...]

Northern Alliance guard at the Amu Darya River

The first four of our 10-ton trucks crossed the Amu Darya River on Saturday, November 3rd. It was so exciting, three old Russian Shasha trucks and an old German truck of uncertain vintage all pulled up on the flood plain of the Amu Darya river on the Afghan side. However, the supplier explained that there had been an argument between Tajik and Russian officials at the ferry after these trucks had crossed, and the Russians had decided to close the ferry on Sunday in protest. With half of the remaining 19 trucks still on the Tajik side, we were running out of time to do the distribution. The Russians took all day Monday for military supplies, and, we were told, on Tuesday the US TV networks bribed the Tajiks, the Russians, or both to get their vehicles with their supplies across the river in advance of our trucks carrying relief.

Yesterday when we went to photograph and inspect the trucks loaded with cooking oil and sugar, it took us back to within a mile or so of the front line. There were huge B-52 strikes taking place just a few miles away from our peaceful river crossing. People were plowing their fields, selling their wares in small markets, riding their donkeys, horses, and camels loaded with supplies to the market at Dasht-e Qala literally two miles from the front lines. We bought several beautiful weavings from the market in a village with no running water, electricity, or plumbing while bombs fell on the ridge across the valley. It is crazy, a high-tech, post-modern war in a pre-industrial country. Suraya, the leader of our delegation, looked at the rising columns of smoke and said, "For the price of two B-52s I could completely feed, clothe, and educate the people of Afghanistan for a year."

Villagers coming to market at Khawaja Bahauddin

It rained all day last Friday, for only the second time in three years. Saturday we visited some Internally Displaced Persons Camps where people were living without permanent shelter. It really was a disheartening sight as everyone got totally soaked. People had built shelters out of blankets and straw mats, which offer some protection from wind and cold, but are of no help whatsoever against rain. Also some of the mud homes built in the last year were washed away in flash floods after the day of hard rain.

Distribution to internally displaced persons in Lolaguzar village in northeast Afghanistan

We decided to distribute first to the 689 families in the Lolaguzar village. These are all displaced persons whose homes in western Takhar Province were destroyed about a year ago in the fighting between the Northern Alliance and the Taliban. The two-day distribution was very orderly. A distribution area was roped off and the bags of wheat, boxes of vegetable oil, and bags of sugar were placed on the ground. The wheat came in 50 kg bags, the vegetable oil came in 2-liter cans, and the sugar was dumped on a tarp and a 5 kg measuring can was available for the distribution to each family. A table was set up with a local ACTED staff member reading the names of the head of household for each family from his list. One of the village elders then called out the name and one or two members of the family came into the roped-off area to collect their portion. The entire village was there to watch, and when one or two impostors tried to collect for a family of which they were not a part, they were quickly ejected. I could never figure out how the elders knew that one woman, fully covered in a burka, was not the right one to collect that family's portion, but everyone approved as impostors were ejected.

Afghan refugee and her sister, Khawaja Bahauddin

From conversations with displaced persons and ACTED staff I learn that most IDPs will want to return to their home communities as soon as security permits. Most of the IDPs I talked with reported that their homes had been destroyed before they fled, so housing and food, until crops can be planted and harvested, will be important.

One of the greatest tragedies of last 22 years of war and repression in Afghanistan has been the neglect, misuse, and non-education of Afghan children. It is estimated that 5 million girls and 4.3 million boys under the age of 15 are illiterate. Children in Khwaja Bahawdin and in IDP camps asked me for pens and pencils more often than any other item. They are longing for education; it may be the wisest investment.

Refugee child with shopping bag for sale made out of Humanitarian Daily Ration packet

I was privileged to represent Quaker and Mennonite communities in this emergency effort, but I also carried with me the contributions from the Muslim Peace Fellowship, the Jerrahi Mosque in Chestnut Ridge, NY, and family and friends of all ethnic and religious backgrounds. I am deeply aware that there is a very diverse community of Americans who do not believe that the people of Afghanistan are our enemy. I know from my previous work with Mennonites and Quakers in Vietnam and in Israel and Palestine that love and compassion are the only viable responses to poverty, war, and terrorism. Each community bombed, every home destroyed, each child killed as "collateral damage" creates a new generation of violence and terrorism.

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