Examination of Witnesses (Questions 68
- 79)
TUESDAY 30 OCTOBER 2001
DR DALEEP
MUKARJI, MS
ALISON KELLY,
MR SAKANDAR
ALI, MR
AFFAN CHEEMA
AND MR
DAVID WALKER
Chairman
68. Thank you very much for coming in this morning
to help us on the inquiry we are doing into the humanitarian crisis
in Afghanistan and the surrounding region. Mr Sakandar Ali, I
understand you have only just recently returned from Pakistan,
literally today or yesterday?
(Mr Ali) The day before yesterday.
69. Perhaps you would like to start by telling
the Committee a bit about your up-to-date impressions and also
perhaps you could help the Committee by telling us about Islamic
Relief, a bit about your organisation. I think, in fairness, we
probably all know Christian Aid and Save the Children Fund really
quite well but it would be helpful to the Committee to have a
little greater understanding of your work, where you are involved
and your up-to-date impressions of Pakistan, then I know all of
my colleagues have got lots of questions to put to all of you.
We will not have opening statements but I am quite sure that during
the course of the questioning there will be plenty of opportunity
for you to make comments. If at the end you feel there are any
points that have not been raised or teased out I will make sure
that there is an opportunity for you to make final comments. The
other boring thing is can everybody please speak up a bit. These
microphones are very deceptive because everyone thinks they are
microphones but they are there for the benefit of the television
cameras and quite a lot of us up here are fairly deaf.
(Mr Ali) Thank you and good morning, everybody. May
I request that I answer the second question first, the introduction
to Islamic Relief, and then go into the questions. Islamic Relief
is a British organisation that was established in 1984 initially
having a Muslim population as its constituents. Over the years
the organisation as well as its work has developed and moved into
a number of countries. Currently there are approximately 20 operations
worldwide. By "operations" I mean where Islamic Relief
is directly working with the beneficiaries and assisting people.
We also have fund raising offices in most of the European countries
now and there is a fund raising office in Los Angeles as well.
Thanks to the British Government recently we have begun to get
significant institutional funding as well. For example, our programme
in Pakistan, in Mazar, Kashmir near the line of control, which
is basically health and sustainable livelihood is funded mostly
by the British Government. Also in view of the current perceived
influx of the refugees into Pakistan, the generous contribution
of £1 million by the British Government again is appreciated.
In the Pakistan/Afghanistan context Islamic Relief has been established
in Pakistan, registered as a charity since 1992, and has been
working in response mainly to emergencies inside Afghanistan,
the odd earthquake, the odd flood, and then the response to the
drought. Early this year the management assessed the crisis mainly
relating to the drought at the time and decided that there should
be a mission in its own right launched in Afghanistan with the
office of the Country Director based inside the country. In April
of this year Islamic Relief registered itself in Kabul and launched
a separate mission in its own right reporting to its headquarters
and I myself was appointed as the Country Director based in Kabul.
Within this time we have established a presence in the central
area through our Kabul office and a presence in the southern area
through our Kandahar office and, along with WFP, we are currently
making assessments in the north. It was in our strategy to open
up an office in Mazar on 29 September which under the circumstances
has been put on hold. I myself have been in Afghanistan all this
time. I had to evacuate back to Islamabad some three weeks ago.
There is an approach where we are separating the work and the
Afghanistan team will take care of the IDP assistance inside Afghanistan
and the Islamic Relief Pakistan office that was already running
will take care of the refugee influx, mainly in the Balochistan
Province with the British Government money and some of Islamic
Relief's own funding in the Peshawar area. In terms of the recent
impressions, I can tell you that on around 13 September, and what
perhaps led to my evacuation from Afghanistan, there was an attack
on Kabul City from the Northern Alliance. Initially we thought
it was perhaps an earthquake or something but it was late at night
and during the day it was confirmed that there was an attack by
the Northern Alliance. It happened again the following night and
then we received a call from the British Foreign Office stating
that Britons should pull out of Afghanistan. We have our own security
analysis and measures that we have put in place. Taking that advice
we actually waited a couple more days to assess the situation
and we were then told by the authorities that they were no longer
able at that time to assure the security of expatriates and it
was perhaps better, because of the uncertain situation, that we
left. So about three weeks ago I left Afghanistan and went into
Pakistan. Since then we have been doing two things. One, there
was a lack of clarity and lack of quality information coming out
of Afghanistan, particularly pertaining to the displacement of
people inside the country and also to the refugee figures, who
was coming across, when they had come, which particular entry
points did they use. What we started to do was from our office,
which is still operational, inside Afghanistan with our local
staff, we put together a border monitoring team. So from within
Afghanistan a border monitoring team would assess the outflow
of people and then from within Pakistan a border monitoring team
would assess the inflow of refugees to try to get quality information
because it was important for us to plan any assistance that we
wanted to give. Based on that we advised DFID that perhaps the
bulk of the refugees would be in Balochistan and therefore the
thrust of Islamic Relief's work for refugees is now in Balochistan,
and to look at the IDP displacement, which provinces are they
going to, are they coming towards the border, what is the profile
of the people? This helps us to target assistance better. I can
conclude by saying that the impression that I have currently is
that there is massive displacement inside Afghanistan at the moment.
The refugee outflow is not at the level that was expected. Particularly
during the first few weeks it was anticipated that a million and
a half or more people would come. I must make the distinction
that this million and a half or more people was predicted into
Pakistan and neighbouring countries, not just Pakistan itself.
That outflow has not been in the numbers that we expected but
internal displacement, particularly now on the other side of the
border, is quite significant, is visible. Those are the issues
we are trying to address at the moment.
Mr Battle
70. Could you give me an idea of how many staff
you have got? You say you have got a team still in Afghanistan
focussing on food relief or direct aid relief and then a team
in Pakistan working in refugees. Is the team in Afghanistan now
working with internal refugee camps as well? What is the size
and scale of your operation?
(Mr Ali) Perhaps I can go office by office because
each office covers a different part of the country. In the Kabul
office the structure is such that we have a senior programme officer,
"programme" meaning the programme that we will launch
to assist people. Within that team there are a couple of engineers,
some field officers. The total strength of that staff is approximately
23 people in Kabul. This basically allows us to do direct implementation.
The fact that we have a large number of field officers where we
need local partners means that they can ensure constant monitoring
of those partners also. Kandahar tends to be bigger because we
have a bigger programme in Kandahar, particularly in Helmand Province.
The management of the programme is done from the Kandahar office.
We have an office in Kajaki. Musa Qala and Kajaki are towards
Iran in the Helmand Province where we have launched our large
ADRP, or Afghanistan Drought Relief Programme. If you include
the social mobilisers from the communities, the engineers, the
field officers, it goes up to about 60-odd people in that particular
province. In Pakistan there is an ongoing programme because the
office has been established since 1992. So there are ongoing programmes
that staff are committed to and we do not want the emergency to
affect that. There is now additional recruitment primarily to
cater for the emergency. In the emergency I can confirm that for
Balochistan we are the official registration NGO for UNHCR and
the requirement for that was 75 people. This means we have got
the reception centres that UNHCR has put forward, so if there
are people crossing the border seeking refugee status or assistance
through these reception centres we can register them. Then we
have a team of programme officers, logisticians, engineers, to
do camp layout and camp establishment and co-ordinate activities
within the camps. All in all, if we take out the registration
aspect, we have recruited about 35 people for this emergency.
The existing staff for the ongoing programmes number about the
same.
71. You work with local partners in Afghanistan
but do you also work with other NGOs, other aid agencies, Christian
aid agencies as well? What is the co-ordination like? Do you co-ordinate
them or are you the only presence really inside Afghanistan?
(Mr Ali) To clarify: Islamic Relief has a policy,
where possible, not to work through partners but we prefer direct
implementation for accountability and proper monitoring and it
is actually at times more cost-effective as well to do direct
implementation. Local partners we use where it is difficult to
have a presence or because it is very expensive to have a establishment
there, we will take on a local partner because it is more cost-effective
although we will ensure constant monitoring of that. For the moment
in the current crisis we have taken on two local partners, one
GRSP, Ghazni Rural Support Programme, which will cater for the
Central Highlands, the Ghazni and Uruzgan Provinces, and there
is another partner, Etabar, which we will activate in Parwan,
which is the northern province above Kabul, for food aid. We will
monitor both of those. In terms of co-ordination, there are co-ordination
bodies that existed before the crisis and exist during the crisis
now in Pakistan. We try not to duplicate that, we would rather
plug into a bigger co-ordination body. The UN has divided Afghanistan
into North, Central, South, East and West and every division has
its regional co-ordinator from the UN Office of the Co-ordinator
for Humanitarian Affairs. We form the body of the UN and local
as well as international NGOs to do the overall co-ordination
under the chairmanship of the UN. We are part of that body. In
Pakistan when initially after 11 September there was this feeling
of imminent reaction towards Afghanistan we assessed that perhaps
it was time to not be taken by surprise by the emergency, but
as I mentioned to my office "I think we will need to start
to have a core capacity and take that risk rather than not take
that risk". What we did was we called for a co-ordination
meeting because at that time there was not one taking place. DFID
was one of the participants, along with ECHO, along with most
of the British and some American NGOs. What we did was basically
bring to the attention of the NGOs that perhaps it was time to
look at a possible crisis unfolding and try to have some form
of co-ordination mechanism. Thereafter, UNHCR and UN OCHA, the
UN Office of the Co-ordinator for Humanitarian Affairs, came up
with very distinct rules, that UNHCR would take the lead role
for co-ordination of refugees and UN OCHA would take the lead
role for co-ordination of whatever happens inside Afghanistan.
We all plugged into these co-ordinating bodies, and we continue
to do so. Islamic Relief is part of the emergency task force which
UN OCHA has made and the basic objective of this task force is
to look at the emergency response currently, during the emergency
and post emergency. Perhaps some of you have viewed the Donor
Alert document. It was part of the emergency task force's
job to put that document together. We commented on it and we drafted
it, so it was more of a consolidated approach in that document.
Mr Robathan: What I would like particularly
to look at is the camps that are being set up and the camps that
have existed for some time and the regime that is instituted in
them be it under the UNHCR or other NGOs working in the camps.
There is a grave concern in my mind that these camps can become
what happened in the Congo in 1984, an extension of a particular
regime, in Congo it was the Interahamwee and here it might be
the Taliban. Indeed, there is some talk of the camps acting as
a fertile recruiting ground, possibly a conscription area, for
the Taliban and, furthermore, as a breeding ground for Islamic
extremists because there is not very much education provided for
children or, indeed, for women and the position of women in the
camps is as dire as it might be in a village in Afghanistan. Could
you comment on that?
Chairman
72. Can we do a tour de table starting
with Christian Aid and then going down?
(Ms Kelly) Christian Aid are based primarily in the
west of Afghanistan and as such in this most recent emergency
have not chosen to focus very strongly on the camps in Pakistan
but have really tried very hard to provide the assistance inside
the west to prevent the IDPs becoming refugees, if you want. Specifically
to those questions I think we would not have inside information.
We do some support work with our local partners who are providing
some non-food relief particularly but we do not have a direct
presence ourselves.
(Mr Ali) Are you referring to the IDP camps which
will be inside Afghanistan?
Mr Robathan
73. I am referring to both sets of camps if
supported by international humanitarian assistance.
(Mr Ali) Let us first look at the potential refugee
camps. The Government of Pakistan is a key player in any establishment
of any camp or any refugee crossing the border. The first border
or the first call is with the government. Thereafter it is the
UNHCR that will take responsibility for the establishment of any
camps. The NGOs are basically after that. So the policy issues,
the locations, the procedures, all that is dealt with between
the UN bodies and the Government of Pakistan. I can tell you for
the moment that the borders are still closed and since we are
an agency that is registering refugees on behalf of UNHCR there
has not been that many registrations. The camps per se,
although they are planned and some sites have been allocated and
agreed by the Government of Pakistan, have not yet been erected.
One reason put forward for that was that the Government of Pakistan
is not ready to open its borders. Although it is doing a wonderful
job catering to the refugees that exist as part of the old caseload,
it is a little reluctant to have millions more come in. The government
is considering this very carefully and it will not necessarily
be pressured into opening borders until it is ready.
74. But are you not working in the camps that
already exist for two million refugees that have been there for
perhaps a decade?
(Mr Ali) It has been the organisation's policy that
in Pakistan we would not work with refugees until recently. The
reason for that was out of any funding that we had for Afghanistan
we felt the need was much bigger inside the country. The refugees
have a host government, they have an infrastructure and they have
access via the international community and aid workers to them.
Often inside Afghanistan, particularly in the remote areas we
work in, it was not always easy, so whatever funding we had the
priority was always inside Afghanistan. That is referring to the
old caseload. In the new crisis Islamic Relief is looking to work
with refugees. It has received funding and it is in preparation
but we are waiting for that refugee influx to take place before
any work can start. In response to your question, we have not
been working with the old caseload of refugees so I am not in
a position to answer.
75. We visited a camp, at least two of us did,
outside Rawalpindi in 1999 and I have to say that I was struck
at the time by the lack of facilities, lack of medical attention,
the position of women in the camp and the lack of education as
well. I would not blame necessarily UNHCR but it was in a pretty
dire state. I think it is very important from our point of view
that we do not create further camps in dire states and we improve
those that do exist. Would you be in a position to provide education
in camps if you were helping in camps, with UNHCR of course?
(Mr Ali) I think, firstly, it is difficult to try
to link the existing camps with the establishment of new ones
because there is a very clear-cut signal from the Government of
Pakistan itself that it does not want the two caseloads, the new
and the old, mixing together. If you look at the potential sites
that have been proposed, they are mostly along the Pashtun belt
ranging from Peshawar down to Balochistan. There is a very difficult
terrain and a long distance between them. The camps that exist
like Jalozzi and Shamsharu, they are in Peshawar, they are near
the city. The new camps, if and when they get established, would
actually be along the Pashtun belt to simply try to separate them.
In our project that we put forward to DFID and the donors, the
assistance that we have the expertise for and the expertise that
we know we can deliver is shelter, is food and non-food, blankets,
water, sanitation and health. Education is not something that
we have put forward and it is not something that we have considered
so far.
(Mr Walker) Speaking on behalf of Save the Children,
we are also working closely with UNHCR, the Government of Pakistan
and agencies in helping to prepare various locations for the potential
influx of refugees in North West Frontier Province primarily,
also in Balochistan. I certainly take the point about the issue
of adequacy of conditions in these camps and certainly as a humanitarian
agency it is our major concern to ensure that we have the basic
conditions for health care, for shelter, for education, and certainly
from our point of view safe spaces and adequate attention paid
to child protection in those camps. We are very, very realistic
and aware of the constraints there. I think one of the things
that is worth highlighting, and very much a point that the Government
of Pakistan has been making, is that one of the reasons why they
have been reluctant to open their borders very clearly to people
is because there is a lack of clear support on the table from
the international community. I would certainly support that there
needs to be clear pledges and support up front in order to support
the Government of Pakistan in meeting its obligations under international
law.
Ann Clwyd
76. As one who visited the camps in the North
West Frontier two years ago I support what my colleague has said.
There are lots of questions I would like to ask you, but I would
like to get back to immediate things and the situation with the
refugees. What is your perception, having been there very recently,
of where the refugees from the cities who are perhaps fleeing
the bombing in some terror are going? What do you think the situation
is in the areas to which they are going? Secondly, some of the
most awful scenes I have seen in my life in situations of conflict
have been when refugees are fleeing towards borders which are
shut to them. Pakistan, as I understand it, has opened and shut
and opened and shut, so it is a confusing situation there where
on some occasions they are open and on other occasions they are
shut. It seems from the accounts of journalists that if you have
money you can cross the border. I wondered if you could tell me
about the situation for the refugees on the border with Pakistan,
on the border with Iran, on the border with the Stans, from the
information that you have at the moment?
(Mr Ali) I will try. Firstly, the internal displacement
pattern inside Afghanistan is complex in that initially people
were leaving the provinces as a result of drought and going and
settling around the outskirts of cities, be it Kandahar, Kabul
or whatever. The initial first displacement was the result of
the drought. Now as a result of fear, for whatever reasons, be
it air strikes, be it the potential of war, there has been a second
displacement, those moving away from the cities either towards
the border or the provinces. Where are they going? They are going
towards the border or the provinces. The flow to the provinces
is much more than towards the border. We believe there are a number
of reasons for this. One, it is a treacherous journey to get to
the border. There are those that do not have the money for transport,
and the private transport companies are now charging extraordinary
amounts of money to transport people to the border, so where you
have a family of seven people it is often difficult to afford
transport to the border. Plus, people do still have radios and
they know that the borders are still closed. They are not necessarily
willing to make that journey to the border and pay so much only
to find out the borders are closed. The preferred option is to
go the provinces in the first instance where you have friends
or family so you are hosted by people. In the second instance,
there are now IDPs, flocks of people, in makeshift shelters inside
the country. This ranges from Herat in the west all the way to
the east. IOM recently approached Islamic Relief and requested
that they need 8,500 tents for the new internally displaced people
in the Herat region and asked us what we could contribute. We
know that there is internal displacement. If I may explain there
is a distinct difference between Torkham border and Chaman border
which also demonstrates the flow towards Chaman as opposed to
Torkham. Torkham has been the official tightly closed border between
Pakistan and Afghanistan and it is also the main freight route
between Peshawar and Kabul. That border has been very difficult
for people to cross because it is not a relaxed border. Chaman
however from our own experience, because we have driven from Quetta
through Chaman, is a very relaxed border. There are sentries watching
but there is not this rigorous checking that happens in Torkham.
A lot of the people who crossed initially at Torkham were either
dual nationals, they had Pakistani ID cards or they had homes
on the other side, that was the first wave of people who came
in. The second wave were those who perhaps had friends and relatives
who could host them or had some money so they could rent a flat
or something. Now those who are left behind or those who are crossing
now are the ones who are seeking refugee assistance and that is
why in our registration two weeks ago we had 15 families and now
there are 250 families and it is increasing every day. People
are now more genuinely coming across as refugees. What are the
problems inside with displaced people and where do they go? In
the provinces our concern is that there is very little shelter,
people are in makeshift shelters, and those who are being hosted
by families, that hospitality may soon run out because they were
not expecting lots of people to host. Yes, culturally it is fine
but coping mechanisms of local communities will begin to break
down. That is an issue that we have to note and we have to respond
to it. Those who are camping or sitting on the other side of the
border I discussed recently before coming to Britain with DFID
and my opinion is we should not encourage displacement on the
other side of the border, so assistance like shelter is not a
preferred option at this stage because people also have the right
to become refugees and if you have semi-permanent structures on
the other side of the border it is a whole complicated issue.
When it comes to the basic assistance of food, perhaps winter
clothing and water, that we cannot ignore because people do need
that.
(Dr Mukarji) I would just like to support what Sakandar
has said. The priority for the agencies and I think the situation
in Afghanistan is to do something about the internally displaced
people because that is where the largest numbers are. They have
not really become refugees now and for most of us we would not
like them to become refugees because our experience of the last
time they came out was they became permanent and a problem inside
Pakistan. The numbers we have from partners and from networks
and from sister agencies is there are about half a million people
already internally displaced and only 65,000 or a few more have
become refugees across the border. The situation inside Afghanistan,
beside the fact they are going back into the provinces and becoming
a burden on their families and the cultural and community coping
mechanisms, is that these people are in a situation where there
was already a three year drought and a 20 year civil war. The
situation well before 11 September was we began to know and see
that we were coming into a situation of a possible famine and
a possible situation where families and people in huge numbers,
possibly estimated at five million, were going to be needing food
and other supplies and the international community was trying
to find resources to get that food and other supplies into Afghanistan
to help with both delivery and distribution. The data we have
now from the World Food Programme and from our own staff and in
discussions is that of the daily requirement of food that is necessary
to feed people inside Afghanistan today only 25 per cent or less
is getting in for the various reasons that we can go into.
77. Twenty-five per cent.
(Dr Mukarji) Our figures are actually 19 per cent
for October. It is certainly less than 25 per cent. The reality
is not only that the food getting in is much less than is required
but the actual distribution of food is only 15 per cent. The reality
of the humanitarian crisis inside Afghanistan, which is where
we would like to help people to stay in their communities, to
provide the seeds and the resources to cope with the winter and
prepare for next year's harvest, is that the crisis is inside
Afghanistan, the crisis is not being managed and unless we have
a major programme of trying to find a humanitarian response that
is independent, that is adequate and that is urgent, we are going
to see a very serious crisis, not only of displaced people but
the displaced people today are going to suffer from disease, starvation
and a variety of other problems.
Chairman
78. I am going to ask Mr Walker if he wants
to add anything, and then Mr Cheema.
(Mr Walker) I would endorse everything that Christian
Aid is saying along that line. What I would add is that of course
it is not just food, we need to be talking as well about a variety
of other types of assistance which importantly include shelter,
clothing, other household equipment, health care, etc. If we look
at the vulnerability of communities and particularly their children
we will see the cumulative effects of decreasing nutritional status
and all the additional problems around decreasing health care
which we believe will really lead to significant mortality over
the coming months.
(Mr Cheema) I agree with everything that has been
said by the panel but the other thing that needs to be added here
is the capacity of Pakistan, and specifically if we are talking
about the Balochistan area where Islamic Relief has been working
for the last two years, the capacity of the host population to
absorb such refugee flows. The main province that borders Afghanistan
is called Javi, which is a province we have worked in extensively,
and that itself is suffering from its own drought over the last
three years which the WFP did their own assessment of. That also
needs to be taken into account and may well be a major factor
in the Government of Pakistan being reluctant to let refugee flows
in.
Ann Clwyd
79. I wanted you to address the question of
what is happening on the borders with Iran and Uzbekistan, etc.
Could you tell us the position there? Lastly, if the military
action continues, as it looks as though it is going to do, what
then is your prediction on the humanitarian situation?
(Ms Kelly) From our information, and we have now at
long last been able to get a team into Iran about a week ago,
there are not significant movements into Iran so far. There may
be some people coming over the borders. It looks like there is
the possibility of some supplies going in westward and covering
the west. The people in the west, it should be understood, do
not have the possibility to go to Pakistan, their only option
would be to leave but, as I say, this has not yet transpired.
There are, as you probably know, some camps that have now been
established inside Afghanistan territory both in Northern Alliance
and in Taliban controlled territory. We hope to visit those fairly
shortly to find out who is there. There are some disturbing reports
that some of these people may not actually be IDPs or refugees
but people who have voluntarily or involuntarily been repatriated
from Iran. There are a lot of complexities on that border that
need to be sorted out but at the moment it is very early days
for us to be able to make any real judgment or assessment.
(Dr Mukarji) Could I answer the second part of the
question. I think you said if the military action continues what
do you think might happen? We and other agencies, including Islamic
Relief, have been asking for a pause in the bombing and we had
hoped that if the pause came through—today we were delighted
with the Guardian poll that showed 54 per cent of people
were supportive of a pause in the bombing—our only information
is that we have got about two weeks as a window of opportunity
to get in adequate supplies at least for the districts that are
in a winter situation where we will not be able to get in supplies.
As I have already told you, we are not getting in adequate supplies
of food and other things that are required like medicine, blankets,
and health care facilities, but we are also not able to distribute
it. If the data is coming out and we have no way to verify it,
we are talking of a potential humanitarian crisis where large
numbers of people are going to suffer because of the famine, because
of the drought, because of the lack of food and because of the
lack of other supplies. So our hope is—and we urge the British
Government, we are urging the international community, in fact
we are urging all parties in the country (Afghanistan)—to
try to find a mechanism by which we can use the UN and the international
community to find safe spaces and humanitarian spaces to get in
the supplies required, to find the mechanisms to be able to stock
before winter and to be able to distribute that into the communities
by the NGOs and others before winter and after winter settles
in we can continue with the other places where we will still have
access. Because of the military operations from our own information
on the ground, there are truck drivers and staff who are scared
to go in, who have fears of taking in trucks. We have stories
of problems where people have moved away and we cannot get the
supplies in so we are just extremely worried about what might
happen inside Afghanistan in the next month or so.
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