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The Taliban had forbidden the group to look for Kabul's hungry. Now, women are among the surveyors.
©Associated Press
December 6, 2001
KABUL, Afghanistan -- Burqas slipped over their heads, women with a pen in one hand and a notebook in the other have been knocking on doors around the capital this week, trying to identify who is eligible for precious World Food Program cards.
Selecting the poorest in a city ravaged by relentless war is no small task. As the surveyors move from neighborhood to neighborhood, men and women tug on their clothing, trying to drag them home and prove their need.
But the mere existence of the survey is a major step. The Taliban had forbidden it since taking power in 1996.
It is also a sign of progress for the 2,400 female surveyors, as the Taliban banned women from working except in select health and education jobs. Under the Taliban, who fled the city on Nov. 13, women were publicly beaten if they were not covered.
Female surveyors wore burqas Tuesday, but much of the time they were casually thrown back over their heads to reveal their faces. They were quick to smile and talked quietly and patiently with residents.
About 1,200 men are also conducting surveys. In teams of three -- two women and one man -- surveyors walked door-to-door along Kabul's dusty, rocket-rutted streets.
When the survey ends, 1.2-million people will have been questioned, said food program spokesman Khalid Mansour. Tens of thousands of families will be on the final list.
Most of Kabul's residents are poor, Mansour said, and at least 750,000 -- nearly one-third -- are dependent on international assistance for their survival.
"There is a hierarchy of misery. There are poor and there are poorer," he said.
The food program had pressed the Taliban to survey the poorest, but the militia refused. The existing system -- based on surveys conducted before the Taliban came to power -- was deeply corrupt, Mansour explained.
Through the years, he said, Taliban officials would sell ration cards, taking them from some and giving to their loyalists. Residents leaving the city often sold their ration cards.
As of this year, Mansour estimated that 40 percent of the people receiving food from the program were not among the neediest in Kabul but had managed to obtain their ration cards fraudulently.
Under the Taliban, the food program briefly shut down its bakeries, which fed hundreds of thousands, because of the Taliban's refusal to allow a fresh survey. The bakeries shut down again after the Sept. 11 attacks because of security concerns.
Some of the bakeries were specially for widows, whose situation was acute because the Taliban would not let them work. The widows' bakeries will reopen soon, Mansour said, since their operations were relatively free of fraud.