[“My plea to the Taliban, to everybody engaged in violence in this country, is please respect the work of aid agencies,” Toby Lanzer, the United Nations’ humanitarian coordinator in Afghanistan, said on a visit to a Kabul hospital packed with the wounded from Ghazni and from a suicide bombing targeting an education center in the capital last week.]
By Mujib Mashal
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Afghan
internally displaced people receiving food rations distributed by the
Turkish
Disaster and Emergency Management Authority in Herat,
Afghanistan,
this week. Credit Jalil Rezayee/EPA, via Shutterstock
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KABUL,
Afghanistan — The United Nations urged all
sides of the Afghan conflict to protect aid workers delivering critical
assistance to a population caught in relentless violence.
Afghanistan remains among the three most
dangerous countries for aid workers, and a recent escalation in violence has
often blocked important relief from reaching civilians.
The appeal on Saturday came as the Afghan
government and aid agencies began delivering assistance to Ghazni, a city 90
miles south of the capital Kabul which was under a Taliban siege for several
days. Hospitals were overwhelmed with casualties and the water supply,
electricity, and telecoms were shut down.
“My plea to the Taliban, to everybody engaged
in violence in this country, is please respect the work of aid agencies,” Toby
Lanzer, the United Nations’ humanitarian coordinator in Afghanistan, said on a
visit to a Kabul hospital packed with the wounded from Ghazni and from a
suicide bombing targeting an education center in the capital last week.
“This year so far, we have had 23 aid workers
killed. We have had 37 aid workers seriously injured. We have had 74 aid
workers abducted. It is a disgrace,” he said.
Civilians have borne the brunt of the most
recent conflict in Afghanistan, which began with the American invasion in 2001.
Since 2009, when the United Nations began
systematically recording civilian casualties, more than 30,000 Afghan civilians
have been killed and more than 55,000 have been wounded. The fighting still
displaces thousands of people from their homes every week.
Adding to the woes of Afghan civilians this
year is a drought affecting two thirds of the country. The United Nations says
more than two million people could face food shortages. The west of the country
is the worst hit, with more than 20,000 people already displaced from two
provinces.
Officials are still assessing the damage in the
city of Ghazni after the days-long Taliban assault. With telecom networks down
for most of the five days of fighting, information has trickled out sparsely.
Casualty figures remain uncertain, with a
senior official saying about 70 civilians, 155 members of the security forces,
and more than 400 Taliban insurgents were killed. Local residents have also
claimed that Afghan and American airstrikes meant to try to push back the
Taliban have caused civilian casualties.
Mr. Lanzer said aid organizations had
prioritized resupplying the main hospital in Ghazni and chlorinating the city’s
water supply to make sure the population gets suitable water at a time when
temperatures are running high. Mine clearance workers were also trying to rid
neighborhoods of explosives left behind, often the cause of civilian
casualties.
A team of surveyors is also looking at
unexploded ordnance, Mr. Lanzer said.
Dejan Panic, the Afghanistan program
coordinator for Emergency, a medical organization that provides trauma care in
large parts of the country, said their hospitals and smaller clinic around the
country are overwhelmed. The three operating rooms and six wards in the
organization's Kabul hospital have been busy with victims from Ghazni and from
other bombings in Kabul and surrounding provinces.
Even before the assault on Ghazni city, Mr.
Panic said, the fighting in other parts of the province had taken a heavy toll.
In the month of May alone, their ambulances transferred more than 160 patients
from Ghazni province to Kabul for surgery.
“Ghazni is the busiest first-aid post we have
around the country,” Mr. Panic said.
The siege on the city made the transfer of the
wounded difficult. Ambulances were caught in crossfire as they brought the
wounded to Kabul.
“We are reviewing our policy of evacuating the
wounded in night time,” Mr. Panic said. “The access is becoming more of an
issue. We are trying always to get assurances through community elders, through
officials, that the humanitarian corridor is respected.”
