24 December 2001
As War Winds Down, Thousands of Afghan Refugees Still Vulnerable to Starvation and Cold
Between the Lines

In little more than two months, the U.S.-led campaign to topple the repressive Taliban regime in Afghanistan has for the most part succeeded. Intense fighting in the Tora Bora region stopped as al Qaeda fighters were driven from caves and shelters in the mountainous region. But, both the U.S. military and their anti-Taliban Afghan allies -- who laid siege to the area from the air and on the ground -- admitted they did not know the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden or other high-level al Qaeda leaders.

According to a report compiled by professor Marc Herold of the University of New Hampshire, an estimated 3,500 Afghan civilians have thus far been killed in the U.S. bombing campaign. Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of Afghan refugees are without food, shelter and medical care as harsh winter weather creates ever more dangerous conditions. Shipments of desperately needed food and clothing have been slow in reaching refugees in camps inside Afghanistan. One reason for the delay cited by humanitarian aid groups is the lawless condition around the country, including bands of looters who attack food convoys, permitted by the lack of any U.N. peacekeeping force to maintain order.

Between The Lines' Scott Harris spoke with Medea Benjamin, founding director of the social justice group Global Exchange, who describes the conditions she witnessed among Afghan refugees while on a recent fact-finding mission to the region.

Medea Benjamin: We just came back, having visited seven different refugee camps and seen lots of people who were anxious to get aid from U.N. organizations. But because of problems with the roads, particularly those who were in camps within Afghanistan, the food is not getting to the people that need it.

Between The Lines: And what are some of the conditions that you saw among the refugees themselves?

Medea Benjamin: Well, we saw a lot of dysentery, a lot of children who are malnourished, a lot of children who had no shoes or socks, no change of clothing, no warm blankets. Families that had no decent tents to keep them out of the cold and it can get very cold in certain parts of Afghanistan where it's already snowing. So I would say the combination of not enough food, decent shelter or clothing puts many hundreds of thousands of people in a very precarious situation.

Between the Lines: Because the U.S. and their Afghan allies have now virtually defeated the Taliban and Al Qaeda, the thought is that the aid will soon start flowing to those that need it the most. Is that something that you think is safe to assume at this point or not?

Medea Benjamin: Well, I think that it will be better than it was, but given that the roads are still unsafe, drivers are putting their lives at risk by taking in humanitarian aid and aid workers are putting their lives at risk at distribution centers. So, what is still needed is an international force to guarantee that the food gets to who needs it. Now, with the new Afghan government getting situated on Dec. 22nd and an international force going to Kabul to protect that government, there's the beginning of an international force in Afghanistan, but so far no provisions have been made for that same force to be protecting the different roads. So while the situation should improve with an end to the fighting, there's no guarantee.

Between The Lines: What are the obstacles standing in the way of getting those peacekeepers from various nations? What's the problem in getting them there quickly so that the aid can start flowing?

Medea Benjamin: The problem in the past month has been the United States. The U.S. has said they didn't want any other nation to send in a force, and there were about five or six nations that were ready to do so that included France, Britain, Turkey, Indonesia, Bangladesh and Jordan. But the U.S. said that having another international force inside the country would divert the United States from its focus on defeating Al Qaeda, so the U.S. blocked that force. Now the Northern Alliance which is the majority force in the new government is also reluctant to have an international peace-keeping force securing the roads because the Northern Alliance and their defense minister, would like to be the ones in control themselves. Now, obviously if they had the ability to control the situation there wouldn't be a problem today and there is a problem so they can't control it. And everyone we talked to while we were there said they wanted an international force, that they didn't really care which country was sending the troops, but they wanted someone to guarantee that there would not be this constant looting and banditry on the roads.

Between The Lines: During your trip, did you learn anything more about the number of casualties -- civilian, military -- that have been claimed by the U.S. war on Afghanistan thus far? It seems that the U.S. media, the White House and military really have said very little in the way of, how they would phrase it, "collateral damage." But we're talking about civilians and others who have been killed by the massive bombing in certain parts of the country.

Medea Benjamin: We were very surprised from the day we got (inside Afghanistan) and the day we got to Pakistan at the encounters that we had with people who had either lost a loved one, a member of their family, a neighbor, or they themselves had been physically hurt by the bombing. As we encountered family after family, we realized that we were not talking about dozens of people, we're not talking about hundreds of people, but that this must be in the thousands. Now, people in the region were talking in the level of 2,000 to 3,000, some of them said as high as 5,000. But nobody had an accurate picture. There is a U.S. professor who recently came out with a report saying about 3,700 dead -- and this (was calculated) from a compilation of press reports that have come out in different countries around the world. So the numbers are probably over 3,000. We're talking about innocent victims here; we're not talking about soldiers who died in the fighting. But (the numbers are) probably larger than the number who died at the World Trade Center and let's remember that these people were every bit as innocent as those who died in the trade center towers.

Contact Global Exchange by calling 1 (800) 497-1994 or visit their Web site at http://www.globalexchange.org

See related links and listen to an excerpt of this interview in a RealAudio segment or in MP3 on our Web site at: http://www.wpkn.org/wpkn/news/btl122801.html for the week ending 12/28/01.

Scott Harris is the executive producer of Between The Lines. This interview excerpt was featured on the award-winning, syndicated weekly radio newsmagazine, Between The Lines, for the week ending Dec. 28, 2001.