UN may close its Afghan operations

The United Nations yesterday said that in view of the increasing threat to the safety of its workers in the Taliban-ruled territory, the United Nations "may be forced to close its humanitarian operations."

Revealing a new threat to its humanitarian workers in Afghanistan from what it called Taliban's "foreign guests" from the Gulf states, UN Coordinator for Humanitarian Assistance to Afghanistan Erik de Mul told a news conference at his Islamabad-based headquarters that senior UN officials had returned disappointed from Kabul where talks to end a food survey row failed to make any headway.

These "guests" were threatening and harassing international aid workers, he said. The United Nations "may be forced to close its humanitarian operations, which will be very sad," said Mul, who appeared glum and disturbed.

He did not give the number of the "foreign guests" or their nationalities, but he was apparently referring to Arabs, who had stayed on after the 1979-89 jihad against the Soviet invasion as well as others who have joined the Taliban in later years.

"These people make menacing gestures by moving a hand across the throat to warn aid workers that they could have their throats slit", the coordinator lamented. Mul said this serious problem had been brewing over the past one and a half years and had now reached a point that the UN had to speak publicly about it. He said the Taliban authorities had promised to seriously look into the complaint.

"Our workers have been advised to keep a low profile and avoid walking in the streets." Mul said the World Food Programme bakeries in Kabul, which have been supplying subsidised breads to some 300,000 poor and destitute people, would be closed by June 15 if Taliban authorities did not allow the UN to engage 20 to 30 Afghan women to carry out a survey of the beneficiaries.

Taliban say they cannot permit involvement of Afghan women in the survey as they claim it is against Islamic Sharia while the UN holds that employing female surveyors was necessary to prepare proper lists of beneficiaries and pinpoint misuse of bread facility by corrupt and selfish elements.

"We need this survey, otherwise we will have no option but to close the bakeries," Mul warned.
The UN delegation dismissed a Taliban proposal that Pakistani, Tajik or Iranian women be engaged for the survey because this was not feasible, Mul said, adding it was also a self-contradictory suggestion by the Islamic militia. "The ball is now in the Taliban court.

They should come to terms with the reality. We have no political motives, it is a humanitarian issue."