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Terrorist Attack Response Help

The unprecedented attack on the United States committed on September 11, 2001 has brought tremendous challenges to our country and society.  Among those challenges are the spiritual and religious challenges before us.  Here is a collection of material that may provide some guidance or help in this most difficult time.

Airdrops Hurt Aid

Note #6905 from PCUSA NEWS to PRESBYNEWS:

 Title:  Airdrops jeopardize Afghan aid operations, Christian agency says

17-October-2001

by Laurie Spurr

GENEVA - An international network of church aid agencies has criticized humanitarian airdrops linked to U.S.-led military strikes in Afghanistan, saying they compromise other aid efforts in the region.  Action by Churches Together (ACT) International, based here but uniting church-related relief efforts world-wide, called the drops of food packages from military planes "ineffective" and even potentially "dangerous" for the civilian population.

         The airdrops were "jeopardizing the credibility of humanitarian aid in the region and were not an effective means of meeting the desperate needs of the people of Afghanistan," said Thor-Arne Prois, director of ACT's coordinating office, in a statement released on Oct. 15.  Prois said the airdrops violated basic tenets of humanitarian aid, including the need for neutrality and impartiality.          "Simultaneous air strikes and airdrops constitute a total confusion of humanitarian and military actions," he said. Future relief efforts could be delayed or blocked if this confusion led Afghan authorities to question the agencies' neutrality.

         Pilots dropping food had no way of ensuring that it reached the needy, said Prois, who for four years worked in Afghanistan as a representative of Norwegian Church Aid (NCA), one of ACT's member organizations. In addition, people could be injured if they tried to gather food that has fallen on mined fields.        "At best these airdrops are a symbolic gesture," Prois said.

         U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has reportedly admitted that airdrops are less effective than delivery of aid by land.  Rainer Lang, ACT press officer, told ENI that while some people were eating food from the airdropped packages, others were burning the packages because they thought the food was poisoned, according to refugees.  "Everybody knows people need long-term aid to get through the winter," Lang said in a phone interview from Peshawar in Pakistan. "Even if they could airdrop 100,000 (packages) daily, it would not be enough."

         The office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees reports that more than 7 million people in Afghanistan need food aid.  Even before the U.S.-led military operation against the Taliban, the UN had already declared the situation in Afghanistan, which has suffered a three year drought, a humanitarian crisis. After more than two decades of war, about 3 million Afghans had already fled to Pakistan, and another million people had been displaced within the borders of the country.

         Since the military operations began on Oct. 7, thousands more people have been fleeing Afghan cities. The UN, which has removed workers from border areas due to security concerns, does not have precise figures.  With neighboring borders officially closed to Afghan refugees, getting humanitarian aid into the country by road has been haphazard.

         Aid workers talk of individuals crossing the border into Afghanistan carrying supplies on their backs, but aid convoys have been held at border crossings for days due in part to security concerns. Demonstrations in the Pakistan border city of Quetta and other areas, and political strikes yesterday have further hampered movement.  "Here everything is guarded," Lang said. "There's a massive presence of police and army on trucks. It's difficult to move around."

         A convoy of lorries from Church World Service - U.S. ecumenical relief agency and a member of ACT - today passed the border at Quetta carrying 500 shelter kits for central Afghanistan, where people have fled to escape the air attacks in the cities - the second such shipment in two days. Eight CWS lorries had been stuck at the border for a week.

         NCA has been providing two months' worth of wheat and cooking oil to more than 3000 families in the outskirts of Kabul, the Afghan capital. The agency and its local partners are aiming to supply food to 20,000 of the neediest families here and in the mountainous central areas of the country.

         NCA, CWS, the Middle East Council of Churches and Christian Aid, an ecumenical relief organization based in Britain - all ACT members - are working with their local partners to get aid to the needy, especially to mountainous regions which could be cut off with the first snow, perhaps as early as November.  These organizations have moved substantial food and supplies to border areas in Iran, Tajikistan and Pakistan.

         To gain access to the Afghan civilian population, ACT's Prois advocates the creation of "safe corridors," which would have to be protected by authorities on both sides of the border.  His position has received support from the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD). In a statement today, Manfred Kock, the EKD chair, called on the German government to exert pressure for "secure and easily attainable zones of safety for the civilian population" in Afghanistan. 

        "Instead of dropping food indiscriminately from the air, it would be more sensible to create a safe passage for aid organizations to reach the people who are suffering," he said.