The United Nations drew up emergency plans yesterday to feed and shelter an avalanche of Afghan refugees trying to escape a U.S. bombing campaign.
The United Nations, driven out of Afghanistan last week along with international charities, warned of a humanitarian cataclysm this winter for whole villages already subsisting on grass and animal fodder.
“Afghanistan was on the brink of a catastrophe anyway, and then this happened,” said Keith Ewing, a spokesman for the Christian relief charity Tearfund, of the panic over feared retaliation for the terror attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon.
Witnesses said thousands of Afghans had reached the Pakistan border, only to be turned away by guards demanding valid visas.
“We have gone into an emergency mode to prepare for a possible refugee influx,” said Yusuf Hassan, spokesman for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, in Islamabad, Pakistan.
Emergency teams were trying to assess the crisis with Pakistan and Afghanistan’s other neighbors.
“Millions of people will face serious shortages of food, serious shortages of water and other supplies . . . if we cannot deliver the needed assistance,” U.N. spokeswoman Stephanie Bunker told reporters in Islamabad.
The world body is scrambling for answers because charities such as Tearfund, Oxfam and Save the Children, along with the United Nations itself, pulled out of the Afghan capital of Kabul last week in anticipation of U.S. retaliation against terror master Osama bin Laden and the ruling Taliban militia that protects him.
Aid workers said Afghanistan, wracked by years of war, famine and misery, was already living on the edge.
“About 75 percent of Afghans don’t have safe water, 90 percent don’t have adequate sanitation and 75 percent don’t have access to the most basic health care. One in every four kids dies before the age of 5,” said Oxfam’s Matt Grainger.
When the harsh mountain winter sets in, remote areas may be doomed.
“Once the winter comes, all bets are off,” Grainger said.
He said that “if agencies haven’t got full food and shelter in place before Nov. 7 in these remote regions, we won’t be back until spring.”
The lucky refugees who have crossed the border, some traveling miles on foot or horseback, have a dubious future in Pakistan’s impoverished cities and refugee camps.
The United Nations said Pakistan has already absorbed 2 million Afghan refugees.