Uzbek Border Closed To Afghan Aid
November 22, 2001
TERMEZ, Uzbekistan (AP) - Therapeutic milk for malnourished Afghan children sat locked in a warehouse Wednesday, with aid groups leaving town, security restrictions tightening and a route vital for transporting food and medicine into the heart of northern Afghanistan closed.
Aid officials had touted this city on the Uzbek-Afghan border as the center for an operation that could rush aid directly to famine-threatened parts of Afghanistan. But the so-called ``land bridge'' has yet to live up to its promise.
Uzbekistan, citing security concerns, has so far kept its border closed, including the only bridge crossing over the Amu-Darya River, which forms the frontier.
``As soon as stability will be restored in northern Afghanistan, we will consider opening the bridge,'' said Uzbek Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahodir Umarov.
That means no vehicles can make the tantalizingly short, two-hour drive - along what is said to be a decent road - from Termez to Mazar-e-Sharif, the main city in northern Afghanistan only 40 miles away. The road goes across the Friendship Bridge, built by the Soviets for their failed 1979-89 war in Afghanistan.
With the Friendship Bridge closed, some 1,540 tons of U.N. aid supplies have passed through Termez over the past week, shipped by barges across the Amu-Darya to the Afghan port of Hairaton.
But that's merely a ``symbolic'' amount, said Gil Gonzalez, a spokesman for the French aid group Action Against Hunger.
In contrast, five times that load - more than 8,250 tons - have been shipped to Afghanistan over the last month the long way, through Turkmenistan, a route that takes four days and is further complicated by the difficult process of getting visas for the restrictive former Soviet republic.
U.S. and U.N. officials are pushing Uzbekistan to open the bridge. But given the sensitivity of operating in this authoritarian country, they have refused to criticize Uzbek leaders for their hesitancy.
``We are very hopeful that in the near term, perhaps a few days, perhaps a week, we will be able to open the Friendship Bridge which will bring an increased amount of humanitarian assistance,'' Gen. Tommy Franks, the commander of U.S. operations in Afghanistan, said Wednesday in the Uzbek capital, Tashkent.
Some aid groups refuse to even talk about the sensitive issue. Meanwhile, U.N. officials haven't been shy about strongly criticizing non-governmental organizations for complaining about the closed border.
These aid organizations ``are turning up at the last minute trying to do something that others have spent months setting up,'' said Michael Huggins, a spokesman for the U.N. World Food Program.
Some supplies from non-governmental organizations have gone across on barges, but so far no non-U.N. aid workers have been allowed to cross. The organizations had hoped to send experts across Monday to assess the situation, but that trip was canceled after Uzbek authorities insisted only groups that are registered in the country be allowed - a process that can take months.
Because of the difficulties in getting across, French aid group Medecins du Monde, or Doctors of the World, pulled its crew out of Termez on Wednesday to try the Turkmenistan route.
The same route was used successfully in the past week by the group Medecins Sans Frontieres, also known as Doctors Without Borders. But as winter quickly approaches, that group also said it was crucial for the shorter Uzbek route to open.
``Northern Afghanistan needs huge help,'' said Gonzalez of Action Against Hunger, which has flown supplies to set up a nutrition center for starving children to Termez. ``Everybody must be able to enter as soon as possible - there is work for everybody.''
In London, Britain's top foreign aid official said international troops should be sent to Afghanistan to protect agencies delivering relief supplies.
``We need troops on the ground to have order so the new government can take over, assemble Afghanistan's own security forces and the humanitarian effort can go on,'' International Development Secretary Clare Short said Wednesday.
Compounding the difficulties in the north, Termez officials said Wednesday that the city would be restricted to only residents or holders of a special pass starting next month.
Termez was closed during Soviet times because of the military operations run from here in Afghanistan and remained off-limits to tourists even well after Uzbekistan's 1991 independence.
The move is being taken ``to protect and calm the population'' over fears of the Taliban, said regional spokesman Ramazan Ushurov, who insisted it wouldn't be difficult for aid workers or journalists to obtain the passes.