Questions and Answers: ‘We Have to Be Prepared For the Long Haul’

Jan. 4 - Nilgun Ogun is one of the key players in international efforts to bring humanitarian aid to Afghanistan. The director of Asia-program operations for the Save the Children relief organization, she has seen firsthand the impact of drought and war on the country’s most vulnerable citizens. Now in the United States, her four-year posting in the group’s Pakistan/Afghanistan field office included work with programs teaching Afghan children about avoiding land mines, as well as facilitating immunization campaigns in a country where 21 percent of its children die from vaccine-preventable diseases.

TOGETHER WITH AGENCIES like UNICEF and the International Red Cross, her group is now working to keep Afghan civilians alive and supplied with food through the freezing winter. Ogun spoke to NEWSWEEK’s Arlene Getz about the current situation in Afghanistan and the most effective aid strategies for a volatile region. Excerpts:

NEWSWEEK: At the beginning of winter, aid organizations warned that 7.5 million Afghans were likely to need international relief to survive the cold weather. What is their situation at present?

Nilgun Ogun: The situation so far is still pretty dire in Afghanistan. We have been able to get the food into the country in most locations, especially the areas that were going to be cut off because of the snow. But we’re still targeting 700,000 people in northern Afghanistan with food assistance, and we’re going to continue doing supplementary commodities—basically lentils, vegetable oil, iodized salt and beans through the end of March—and distributing the World Food Programme wheat through June.

Are the food convoys able to get into the country?

Nilgun Ogun

They have been going through.

How are they coping with the snow and the bad roads?

Before the snow blocked the roads, we targeted two [southern] districts that were going to get cut off and got food into those areas that would suffice for four to five months. We’re doing smaller distributions to the other areas, where we’re going to have access throughout the year.

When the American airstrikes started last October, aid workers predicted that as many as 100,000 Afghan children could die without humanitarian aid. Any estimates of the death toll so far?

I have not heard of any estimates. But the 100,000 [at risk] is probably still valid. The way that the food distribution occurs, is you distribute in tranches to the villages, so you provide them with food for say, a two-month period for a family. Then you go to the next village and provide them. It’s on a rotational basis because there is no way you can bring in the full need for a six-month period and distribute that simultaneously. According to the World Food Programme estimates, the wheat needs alone for a 7.5 million population is 50,000 metric tonnes [about 55,000 U.S. short tons] a month. That’s just wheat. The quantities are huge.

How confident are you that you managed to get in enough food for those cut off by snow?

We have lists of the vulnerable families, so we were able to achieve our targets. The problem is that the majority of the population also suffers from chronic malnutrition. [This] does not necessarily mean they’re starving, but they are extremely weak, so any kind of illness can have very dire consequences. In Afghanistan, even before the onset of the drought, 85,000 children died a year from diarrhea. Just diarrhea. Those statistics are still there. And we are not going to know what kind of a harvest they are going to have or when the drought is over until some time in March.

What about the situation inside the refugee camps?

Inside Afghanistan, there are some internally displaced people that basically moved either because of fighting or because of the drought. Those people are still there, and they need assistance. We’ll be providing them with heating fuel, blankets and so on, as well as food. In the [Afghan] refugee camps in Pakistan, where we are also working, we have the old caseload, people who were refugees since the [1979-89] Soviet invasion, for example, or subsequently. The programs with them are continuing, They have full refugee status, so we’re still doing primary health care and education with them. Then you have the new arrivals that came out during the past three, four months. Those people are in transition camps, and they are being settled into new camps as well. There were also a number of refugees who found a way to come across the border unofficially, and they went into the cities, into extended families, for example. They are not receiving any aid from anyone.

Is the situation as bad as some predicted, or did the public attention help to avert a crisis?

The international attention on Afghanistan has definitely averted a crisis. There’s no doubt about that. During the summer months [before Afghanistan was in the news], it was very difficult to have anyone pay any attention. You still had 7.5 million people who depended on food assistance to make it through the winter. But in the last couple of months the international attention has definitely helped us get more food and medical services to people to avert a disaster.

So you don’t expect to find the worse-case death toll when the snow melts and the roads are passable again.

Hopefully not.

Land mines are a significant problem in Afghanistan. How many are still there?

The United Nations estimates say that there are 10 million mines. The numbers are probably very fluid. The unexploded bombs are also a very serious danger.

How does your organization teach children to avoid the mines?

Basically, children learn slightly differently. You can talk to them till you’re blue in the face that mines are dangerous, they still won’t understand what they’re supposed to be doing. We try and show them that if [they’re]’re in an area that’s been marked with red stones, don’t go there. If [they] see a dead animal, what are [they] supposed to do? We teach them how to trace their steps back out of the area using memory games. We have those [cards] that have drawings or pictures of mines or animals and [we put them] upside down on the floor. A group of kids get together and they flip them over and they have to match the pictures. Or we have another game called Travel Through Afghanistan—they have to go from Kabul to Mazar-e Sharif. They pick a number and they can go around this map. If they land on a blue question mark, it’s a question about the history or geography of the area. If it’s a red question mark. it’s a question about mines or unexploded bombs.

Where do you give these classes?

We initially started doing them in schools, but when the Taliban came to power and girls were no longer allowed to go to schools, we moved out of the schools to hospitals and mosques, playgrounds, communal areas where both boys and girls could be educated. We’re also doing it in the refugee camps. We’ve been training other organizations, as well. Two of our staff members went to Iran in the summer, for example, to train an NGO [nongovernmental organization] there.

Is it common to see Afghan children who’ve lost limbs to mines?

Yes.

How many have been injured in this way?

When we were collecting data in Kabul in 1995 through ’97, 85 percent of all the casualties from land mines and unexploded ordnance were kids. With land mines usually it’s a single victim—one person steps on a mine and they get injured. With unexploded bombs, it’s usually groups of children who are playing or who pick up the items, so you have multiple casualties. The unexploded bombs are above ground, children can mistake them for toys. The colors are very bright ... Children are automatically attracted to something like that, so they go pick it up and it explodes. As their bodies are smaller, they can’t really handle the trauma. They either die on the spot or if they’re lucky they go to a health-care facility. Then you have to deal with the issue of prosthesis for children. Because children grow so quickly, they need to be fitted with new prostheses for a long time, so the costs are quite high.

How have Afghan children responded to the continuing war in their country? Are they beaten down or do they run around and play?

They run around. One of the things that was really striking was that two days after the bombing in Kabul had stopped, I asked [my Afghan staff] what the effect was on the kids, and the kids were out in the playgrounds. Those kids who were really terrified, crying, wetting their beds at night, had bounced back, and were out playing, being a kid again.

What’s the mood among ordinary Afghans now that the Taliban has been ousted?

People are very hopeful that there is going to be an end to war, that there might be peace, that they might be able to rebuild their country.

Late last year, there were concerns that new refugees would cause a health crisis by bringing infectious diseases into the camps. Has that happened?

There are cases of measles among the new arrivals, and measles is one of the biggest killers of children in Afghanistan. The aid agencies like Save the Children and WHO and UNICEF are trying to immunize the children. Even during the bombing campaign we were able to immunize children against measles and polio in northern Afghanistan. Again, we targeted the areas that were going to get cut off because of the winter to make sure that we reached as many people as possible.

Are the aid agencies all coordinating with each other?

Absolutely. Save the Children works with the United Nations organizations, as well as with the other NGOs. By coordinating and sharing information among ourselves, we are able to ensure that appropriate aid reaches the areas ... We share health statistics with each other, we share information on food convoys, for example. We make our research available to each other.

The American decision to do air drops of food parcels stirred considerable controversy among some relief organizations. Your view?

Air drops are an option that are used a last resort, into areas where you can’t get food any other way. As far as the contents and the targeting, it’s a very complicated process, and I’m not sure the amounts that were being dropped were that significant to meet the need.

Has school enrollment picked up since the fall of the Taliban?

During the winter months is their long school break, so schools will not start until mid-March. There is no heating in the schools in Afghanistan or in the refugee camps.

What’s next?

As an international community, we have an obligation to be there for the long haul, and to help Afghans because they’re ready to work and rebuild their country. We have to be there and provide them with the type of assistance that’s going to be appropriate for them, and timely and sustained. If that happens, I am hopeful that we will turn things around. For me, what’s important is to make sure that the assistance to Afghanistan is well thought out. Everybody means well, but we need to be sure that what we do is based on the tried and true. We have to prioritize and we have to make sure that assistance reaches the communities. It’s not going to be over very quickly.

© 2003 Newsweek, Inc.