KANDAHAR, Afghanistan -- A withering drought has put hundreds of thousands of impoverished Afghans at risk and urgent aid is needed, U.N. officials said on Tuesday.
"There are no walking skeletons yet," said Mike Sackett, Afghanistan country director of the U.N.'s World Food Programme, (WFP) after a three-day visit to the stricken provinces of Zabul and Kandahar last week."But without an adequate response, thousands of Afghans in the southern provinces will face a merciless summer after having lost almost all their rain-fed wheat crops and up to 80 percent of their livestock due to the lack of precipitation," he said.
It was the loudest alarm bell sounded by the relief community since it became apparent the failure of spring rains had dried up wells and hit a region that was once the breadbasket of Afghanistan, one of the world's poorest states.
The provinces are unlikely to receive any more rain before November and the next harvest in the summer of 2001 is a distant prospect for around 400,000 people in the afflicted areas.
Thousands of nomads have fled the area in search of pasture for their animals, countless hundreds of which have already succumbed to the drought or are being sold for rock-bottom prices in local markets.
"We are left with nothing. Our entire assets (cattle) have perished. We don't know what to do," said a nomad called Jaan Baz in Kandahar province.
Fields which should be ripe with grain have turned yellow and roads are busy with nomads heading north in search of water, shelter and grazing.
Baz and other villagers said that carcasses of hundreds of cattle lie under a blistering sun in deserts and mountains and called for immediate aid before the disaster gets out of control.
"The harvest this year will be very poor and there is not sufficient water now, so there is a need for immediate aid to control the situation, before people are forced to leave their villages," said one villager.
The United Nations has launched emergency food distribution in the region, targetting some 400,000 people who are seen as the most vulnerable to a drought which has also struck parts of southern Pakistan as well as Western India.
Fayaaz, a WFP official in Kandahar, hub of the relief operation, termed the drought critical in war-battered Afghanistan compared to India and Pakistan.
"The coping mechanism for such an issue is little here. The resources are less and the impact will be grim if it is not controlled," he told Reuters.
Sackett, in a statement issued in Islamabad, said the WFP's resources were stretched.
"We will be able to help only the most needy and poor hungry people with food, but WFP can only do so much.
"There is a clear need for drinking water, health services and other technical support for the worst-hit communities to help them support themselves over the coming months," Sackett said.
The U.N. has appealed for international aid and asked the ruling Taleban to spend more for drought victims, instead of fighting opposition forces resisting their 90 percent control of the country.
Due to a similar severe drought last year, the WFP started an emergency food distribution in south Afghanistan in February helping about 20,000 people.
"But there is a clear need now to extend and expand humanitarian assistance and include food aid for destitute villages that could engage in self-help projects such as well digging or cleaning of (underground water irrigation channels)," Sackett said.