Microbiome - Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging - Tufts ...

ITISM
Opposite, a girl in Jawzjan
Province receives Australian food
aid. Above, a boy sits atop an
abandoned Soviet tank on a hill in
Kabul Province. Raw sewage flows
in unpaved streets in Kabul.
Nearly one in three
Afghan children
is malnourished,
especially in the
southern part of
the country, which
has been most
affected by the
conflict.
humanitarian crisis. Only by acknowledging
this outcome can they be prepared to
help the Afghans, bringing more resources
to the country, especially to rural areas that
are now off-limits to many aid agencies.
Part of the problem is that most aid
organizations have been allied so strongly
with the central government and the coalition
forces that it is difficult for them to
work safely in most parts of the country.
“It’s going to take time to restore the credibility
of an aid system that is quite biased,”
says Donini. All the Western donors except
Switzerland are involved as parties to the
conflict, and it’s unlikely that this would be
ignored by the Taliban.
“But I think there is an opportunity for
the aid system to mend its ways in terms
of becoming more impartial and independent,
if not neutral,” Donini says. He notes
that the International Committee of the
Red Cross understood long before many
agencies that the victory over the Taliban
in late 2001 and early 2002 wasn’t holding,
and so took a more neutral stance toward
the Islamic fundamental political movement.
Now the Red Cross is one of the few
agencies that can work outside of the main
cities, which are controlled by the central
government.
Because most other aid organizations are
still so clearly allied with the central government
and coalition forces, they have been
unable to maintain strong contacts with the
communities that they had been serving.
Instead, they manage their relief programs
remotely from Kabul, the capital. “I think
this lack of proximity between the aid agencies
and the communities where they want
to work is the main area where progress has
to be made,” Donini says.
“It’s absolutely urgent to find ways of
working in areas that are contested, and the
best way of doing this is trying to maintain
an independence from the warring parties,
to advocate on the basis of humanitarian
principles to convince whoever is on
the ground of what the intentions and the
opportunities are,” he says. TN
Taylor McNeil, the senior news editor in Tufts’
Office of Publications, can be reached at taylor.
mcneil@tufts.edu.
PHOTOS: ABC/SALLY SARA (OPPOSITE); JAMES LONGLEY
summer 2013 tufts nutrition 25