Global Policy Forum

One casualty of the American and Russian plan to get tougher with the Taliban by pushing for a long new list of United Nations sanctions is likely to be the UN's own humanitarian efforts in Afghanistan. Aid workers were fleeing Kabul in droves this week, fearing reprisals if the proposals go through the Security Council.

The timing could hardly be worse. The World Food Programme, which recently launched a campaign for an extra $53m to feed 1m people believed to be close to starvation this winter, says the levels of food assistance per person required for Afghanistan are the highest in the world. Some 200,000 people are at present displaced within the country, many of them driven out of their homes during the past 22 years of civil war. The worst drought in a generation has forced many more off the land, as crops have failed for the third year in succession, leaving no fodder for livestock. Neighbouring Pakistan estimates that, between early September and November 10th, when it closed its borders with Afghanistan, some 46,000 Afghans had fled to its territory.

The United States hopes that further sanctions will persuade the Taliban, the Islamic zealots who now control some 95% of Afghanistan, to hand over Osama bin Laden, believed to be linked with the bombing of the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in August 1998 as well as the attack on an American warship, the USS Cole, in Aden in October. The Russians are keen to place whatever pressure they can on the Taliban, fearing Islamic militancy spreading through Central Asia, spilling over their borders and further contributing to their problems in Chechnya.

Last week the Security Council circulated an "informal" proposal which discussed a new list of sanctions, including an arms embargo on the Taliban, though not on their rivals, as well as restrictions on travel for Taliban officials and the closure of all their overseas offices. The Taliban argue that an arms embargo directed at them, but not at the opposition, under Ahmad Shah Masoud, which still holds areas including the Panjshir valley in the north-east of the country, will only prolong the war. A tenuous effort at peace-broking, initiated last month by the UN special envoy to Afghanistan, Francesh Vendrell, is likely to be an early casualty of any further sanctions.

The Taliban's ambassador to Pakistan, Mulla Abdul Salam Zaeef, argues that "instead of helping the drought-hit Afghans, Washington-sponsored sanctions on Afghanistan under the pretext of Osama bin Laden amount to a human-rights violation." To a degree, he has a point. Last year the UN imposed sanctions on Afghanistan that stopped the national carrier Ariana from flying in and out of the country and blocked some of its international financial arrangements. These measures must have impeded the import of medical supplies, though it is not easy to know how much misery is properly attributable to them and how much to the drought and the war, never mind the Taliban's own skill at obstructing the work of the UN and other agencies in the country. To the Taliban, the UN appears to have a contradictory role, in applying sanctions while simultaneously delivering humanitarian assistance. To outsiders, the Taliban also have a contradictory role: castigating the outside world while accepting its help.

In any event, the Taliban's main concern continues to be the war in the north. When, in September, they took the city of Taloquan from the Masoud forces, many Afghans hoped it would signal the end of the war and the start of proper administration by the regime, which has so far been more concerned with imposing its own version of sharia (Islamic) law--banning music, pictures, sport, and women from working--than providing basic services for its people.

Aid is certainly needed in Afghanistan. Herat, once a thriving centre of Islamic culture, is already struggling to cope with its share of the 165,000 refugees who have returned from Iran since the launch last April of a refugee programme by the UN. These people are distinguishable from other Afghans by their clean-shaven faces. For other Afghans, the Taliban Ministry for the Prevention of Vice and the Promotion of Virtue strictly enforces a rule making the shaving of beards an imprisonable offence.

Of mixed ethnic origin, Turkmen, Uzbek and Pashtun, these families make a colourful spectacle in the camps round the city. Yet conditions are harsh, with poor sanitation, limited access to drinkable water and few employment opportunities. Some women are so malnourished that they have no milk to suckle their babies. Aid workers in Herat are struggling to provide shelter, sanitation and food before winter sets in and northerly winds whip though from Central Asia. The building of 2,000 shelters was interrupted three weeks ago when heavy rains turned some 3m bricks to mud.

Despite this, the Taliban seldom seem grateful to aid agencies for managing Afghanistan's humanitarian crisis while they continue their war in the north. The growth of an "entitlement culture", expressed in relentless demands by the authorities for vehicles, wheat and sinecured positions, has not helped, and the UN and other agencies have often had to bow to these demands just to be able to continue to operate in the country. If more sanctions are applied, the outcome may be a further withdrawal of aid agencies just when the Afghans need them most.