The US bombardment of Afghanistan should cease during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan to allow the delivery of urgent supplies to some 6 million people facing starvation in the coming months, the Concern aid agency said here yesterday.
Mr Dominic MacSorley, Concern's regional director, said humanitarian aid corridors should be urgently set up so that vital foodstuffs, clothes and blankets can be distributed.
Mr MacSorley said a US cessation during Ramadan, which begins on November 17th, would allow the delivery of humanitarian assistance as well as "pacifying" Muslims angered by the mounting civilian casualties.
He said the aid crisis was particularly acute in Taliban-controlled areas of Afghanistan - about 85 per cent of the country - which international humanitarian workers have pulled out of. Those most at risk included "internally stuck" people living in remote areas without resources to flee.
Mr MacSorley has just returned to Islamabad after visiting Concern's bases in north-eastern Afghanistan as well as refugee camps in neighbouring south-west Pakistan.
"Very little food is going in and food has been looted," he said. "The reality is that unless you have experienced international staff on the ground monitoring the situation, it's very difficult to ensure that those who most need the food are getting it." Mr MacSorley described the US's aerial food drops as "grossly inadequate".
Concern has been working in Northern Alliance-controlled north-eastern Afghanistan for up to two years, supplying provisions to some 170,000 people affected by drought.
A survey before last month's attacks on the US showed that 50 per cent of the 800,000 people in the province of Badakshan did not have sufficient food and assets to survive the severe winter there.
That survey found that "widespread destitution and displacement is imminent. If the humanitarian agencies do not take immediate action there will be substantial loss of life during the coming winter."
Six thousand tonnes of food are needed to support people in the north-east during the winter months and in the last six weeks only 800 to 900 tonnes have been moved, said Mr MacSorley.
Food supplies from the World Food Programme have been "negligible to erratic" and Concern has had to purchase food internally in this area, he said.
Mr Simon Coveney, a Fine Gael TD, has spent several days in Pakistan meeting local politicians and aid workers and visiting refugee camps in the south-west of the country with Concern staff.
Up to 80,000 Afghan refugees are estimated to have entered Pakistan since the US strikes began on October 7th.
The government of Pakistan is only permitting particularly vulnerable people, including women and children, to cross the border, despite appeals from the UN for it to ease these restrictions.
Mr Coveney said the refugees he met at the weekend at the Killisiazo reception centre near the Chaman border area were mainly from the Taliban-controlled cities of Kabul and Kandahar, which have been targeted by US air-raids. Mr Coveney said conditions in the camp, which holds some 2,000 people, are "fairly grim".
He too backed Concern's calls for a cessation of the US bombing during Ramadan. He said he detected growing anti-US sentiment among Pakistani people who have witnessed the bombing of innocent civilians.
While he "wholeheartedly" supported the aim of the US's anti-terrorism initiative, he said his visit had prompted doubts about the tactics used to date.
Mr Coveney stressed that he was not qualified to assess the US's strategy from a purely military perspective. The TD will travel to New York early next week, the headquarters the UN Security Council which Ireland is currently chairing. He said he would meet Mr Richard Ryan, the Irish ambassador to the UN, and "try to convince him that it makes a lot of sense for the US to seriously consider a cessation of the bombing during Ramadan and to use the time to urgently set up safe corridors and deliver aid."
Mr Coveney said it would be appropriate for the UN, rather than the US, to negotiate with the Taliban to install such corridors. Pakistan's borders with Afghanistan should be opened, but this should not be a substitute for humanitarian aid corridors. Mr Coveney visited Pakistan on behalf of his party leader, Mr Michael Noonan. He said the party wished to have an informed view on the Afghan issue.
The French daily newspaper, Le Figaro yesterday claimed a CIA agent met Osama bin Laden in a Gulf hospital as recently as last July and received "precise information" about an imminent attack on the US.