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© St. Petersburg Times, published October 12, 2001
Criticism of American attempts to feed starving Afghans came from several directions Thursday, as foreign groups warned that the airdrops of food might jeopardize their neutrality, draw Afghans into mine fields or just confuse them.
The Bush administration disputed arguments that U.S. military airdrops of food in Afghanistan are ineffective and blur the line between military and aid groups.
The food rations make up a small part of the humanitarian efforts for the Afghans, but they will be "a life saver" for those who receive them, said Andrew Natsios, administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development, the agency overseeing the government's relief efforts.
The criticisms:
WORRIES ABOUT NEUTRALITY: Some international aid organizations are growing increasingly uncomfortable with the United States' joint bombing and humanitarian airdrop campaign, saying it may jeopardize the neutrality of their work in the desperate country.
Relief officials acknowledge that with traditional aid programs halted by the bombing, the 37,000 food parcels now being dropped daily over Afghanistan by American military pilots are at least one source of sustenance to a nation on the brink of starvation. But when the military campaign stops, some aid groups fear, their attempts will be viewed as part of the American-led war on terrorism rather than an independent effort to serve the needy, regardless of beliefs.
Already, aid workers with European relief agencies in Muslim-dominated countries have reported being harassed in recent days as pro-American and hence "anti-Islam." Some relief officials are calling for a separate, independent international coalition to oversee humanitarian assistance -- one not spearheaded by the United States -- that would be parallel to the military campaign directed against Osama bin Laden and the Taliban regime.
"We're not questioning the motivation for the war, or the motivation to do something for the Afghan people," said Austen Davis, the head of Medecins Sans Frontieres, or Doctors Without Borders, in the Netherlands, which sends workers to Pakistan. "We're saying that the decision of how to deliver assistance must be divorced from political objectives."
MINE FIELD RISK: Humanitarian aid officials warn that the program could wind up killing people it is intended to help.
With so many people desperate for food, they can be expected to take enormous risks to reach areas where American airdrops of food are occurring -- including crossing mine fields where the rations might have fallen. Even before the airdrops began, 40 to 100 Afghans were killed each week by mines and other explosives littering the countryside after 22 years of war.
"I have seen figures that as many as 7-million mines are still on the ground in Afghanistan," said Alex Renton, a representative in Pakistan of Oxfam International. "People might be rushing into heavily mined areas" to reach the American airdrop locations.
CONFUSING THE AFGHANS: In their clinic at the edge of Quetta, Pakistan, Afghan volunteers with no love for terrorists or the Taliban offer their own damage assessment of an allied campaign they hope may free Afghanistan.
"With all respect, this is nonsense," said Mohammed Arif, who administers the Guardians, an Afghan aid agency. "You bomb on one hand and drop food on the other? What are these poor people supposed to think?"
Arif said that uneducated Afghans who learned to fear Soviet mines dropped from the sky, and who were warned by Taliban rulers against the Americans' new airdrop, are likely to run from the strange cartons.
Where medicines are included, he said, people who cannot read will almost certainly use them wrongly, possibly dangerously.