Kabul, January 28: Eight international humanitarian organizations, urged the US and NATO to stop militarizing Afghan aid and using it as a blackmailing tool, saying the approach is ineffective and puts ordinary people at risk.
“The militarization of aid is putting ordinary people on the frontlines of the conflict,” said the groups, including ActionAid, Care, Christian Aid, Oxfam and the Norwegian Refugee Council.
They cited a US Army manual for commanders in Afghanistan and Iraq designing aid as a non-lethal weapon to “win the hearts and minds of the indigenous population to facilitate defeating the insurgents.”
Taliban, ousted by the US in 2001, have been engaged in protracted guerrilla warfare against the US-led foreign forces and the West-backed Kabul government.
A recent report by the International Council on Security and Development (ICOS) said Taliban had widened its influence to cover almost all Afghanistan.
The humanitarian groups accused the foreign troops of using humanitarian aid as a blackmailing tool to get intelligence about Taliban.
“Offering food and other aid in exchange for information in a country where a third of the population is at risk of hunger is not only unethical, it puts Afghans in potential danger of being targeted by anti-government groups.”
The relief agencies urged the international conference on Afghanistan, to be hosted by London Tuesday with the participation of US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and other foreign ministers, to reconsider the militarized approach to aid meet the real needs of Afghans.
Ineffective
The humanitarian organizations said the military-led aid is focused on short-term activities driven by political pressures and is ineffective for long-term development.
“Military-led humanitarian and development activities are driven by donors’ political interests and short-term security objectives and are often ineffective, wasteful, and potentially harmful to Afghans.”
They also noted that this aid is often distributed by proximity to troop deployments rather than humanitarian need.
“The distribution of aid is heavily biased in favor of areas where the troop presence is strongest rather than distributed according to need.”
The report estimates that international forces have already spent 1.7 billion dollars on aid in Afghanistan so far, while the US military has budgeted an additional one billion dollars this year.
Yet, almost nine years after the US invasion, most Afghans still lack the very basics of life.
The country is so destitute and undeveloped that most inhabitants have no central heating, electricity or running water.
More than 70 percent of Afghans are chronically malnourished, with less than a quarter having access to safe drinking water, according to the international policy think tank Senlis.
Ashley Jackson, head of policy for Oxfam International in Afghanistan, said the Afghan people have suffered a lot and deserve better treatment.
“Afghan people have coped with decades of grinding poverty, conflict and disorder and need real, long-term solutions.”
-Agencies