EuropaWorld 1/6/2001 WFP to Close Kabul Bakeries

The Taliban's hostile stance towards the international community tightened by another notch this week. Despite delivering aid to the country worth in excess of $750,000 per day, aid agencies have repeatedly protested at the lack of co-operation on the part of their hosts and the difficulties and dangers they face in helping some of the poorest citizens in Afghanistan. The UN Country Co-ordinator, the embattled Erick de Mul, spent three days with Taliban officials in Kabul, according to a statement released by his office, but the militant regime remain studiously unmoved; or rather their response was to give another turn to the rack on which the aid agencies are tethered.

The World Food Programme (WFP) have for some time run bakeries in Kabul whose loaves provide sustenance for more than a quarter of a million of Kabul's citizens. The Taliban have already made trouble for women working in these bakeries; however, that issue appears quiescent for the moment. The problem now is the distribution of the bread.

As WFP are providing the flour (which is delivered by convoys of trucks over the mountain passes from Pakistan) and, of course, paying for all of the bakeries' running costs, they believe they should determine who gets their bread. Not so, say the Taliban. WFP have been trying to get the Taliban to agree to let them change the distribution of bread agreed when the bakery operations were just beginning. Times have changed and WFP are far from convinced that their bread - mostly paid for by the taxes of donor governments in Europe and America - is going to those most in need of it. Although they do not say as much, it is a reasonable supposition that they fear some of the bread is finding its way into military hands.

So they want to do a survey to identify the poorest and most destitute persons in Kabul and deliver the bread to them. After more than a year of patient negotiation WFP finally obtained the Taliban's agreement last month. The authorities said that the survey could go ahead. But now, you guessed it, the permission has been rescinded.

"This means that about 6,000 widows and their children, who have no recourse to provide for themselves other than by begging, will now be deprived of the urgently required food aid that WFP intended to provide," said Mr. Gerard van Dijk, WFP's Country Director for Afghanistan. "We need to make sure that those receiving aid are the truly needy."

The ostensible reason for the Taliban's refusal is that WFP intend to employ local Afghan women to carry out their survey and this is not in the Taliban's scheme of things.

Now WFP is fighting back against this intolerable situation. It has announced that its Kabul bakeries will close on June 15th unless the Taliban relent. Whether this will have any effect on the Taliban hardliners must be questionable, yet WFP have little alternative, especially if they suspect their hard won food aid is being diverted to non-humanitarian ends.

Although its general bakeries face suspension, WFP said it would continue to operate 21 bread shops that are run by women and serve more than 40,000 widows and their children who are registered as beneficiaries. WFP will also continue its wider operations aimed at helping 3.8 million poor Afghans avoid starvation due to the combined effects of drought and civil war.