Annan warns of worsening Afghani plight

UNITED NATIONS -- Life for ordinary people in Afghanistan could become even nastier if a drought continues and the civil war intensifies.

This was the dire warning issued by the U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan as the country's protracted civil war showed no signs of abating.

With more than a half a million people already searching for food, shelter and protection, Annan said "hundreds of thousands more people are likely to become displaced as the conflict spreads and the drought worsens in the next two or three months."

GALLERY Afghanistan under the Taliban

"Desperation forces entire families to leave their homes, take their chances with bandits and the elements, and travel for days in the hope that help may be available to them," Annan said in a Monday report.

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Foreign assistance is falling far short of need, and refugees are being turned away at the borders not only of Tajikistan but also of Pakistan, already home to 1.2 million Afghani exiles, Annan said.

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Annan said there appeared to be no end to the protracted civil war, which is no longer seasonal but a year-round event between the country's Taliban rulers and the United Front under Gen. Ahmed Masood.

The United Front controls a swathe of land in the north and pockets of resistance elsewhere.

Ample weaponry

Annan also noted that peace talks were nearly nonexistent between the combatants and Afghanistan's neighbors, most of whom are supplying one side or another with arms to continue the war.

While Pakistan is forbidden by the U.N. Security Council to ship arms to its ally, the Taliban, few doubt all sides are receiving weapons.

"The two warring sides, with no lack of weapons and war materiel supplied by their external backers, are unmistakably preparing for heavy fighting," Annan said in the report.

"It is the countries that have intervened most in Afghanistan that are also the most affected by the negative consequences of the Afghan conflict," he said.

The countries in the so-called abortive "six plus two" peace talks are Afghanistan's neighbors: China, Iran, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan -- plus the United States and Russia.

The U.N. Security Council has imposed two sets of sanctions on the Taliban to pressure it into surrendering Saudi militant Osama bin Laden, accused of plotting the 1998 bombings of two U.S. Embassies in Africa.

They include grounding of the national airline, travel bans and an arms embargo.

Annan said sanctions were not responsible for the current humanitarian crisis, but they are blamed by the Taliban for the country's economic woes.

Kazakhstan's President Nursultan Nazarbayev has offered to host talks on ending the conflict in Afghanistan, the visiting U.N. special envoy on Afghanistan said

But the Taliban has so far refused to join any peace talks mediated by the U.N. because of the sanctions.

Annan said that sanctions could not be an end in themselves or a substitute for a proper policy and strategy. He said the international community "must set clear objectives and develop a strategy to achieve them."

The strategy should also include proposals for development that could give warring parties hope for a decent peacetime life, he said.

For example, Annan said that the cultivation of opium poppies had dropped but said he suspected farmers would return to it since promises to help them with alternative crops had not been fulfilled.

Afghanistan is considered the world's largest source of opium, used to make heroin.

Reuters contributed to this report.

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