UN and Taleban meet for Afghan aid summit

Displaced families in Baghlan Province have received little assistance from aid workers

By staff and wire reports

KABUL, Afghanistan -- The United Nations is locked in high level talks with Afghanistan's ruling Taleban to negotiate better conditions for aid workers trying to save the lives of millions of internal refugees and drought victims.

The talks come amid warnings from U.N. observers in Afghanistan that the impact of drought, disease and civil war is worsening by the day, with one U.N. spokesperson saying "the world has only seen a small glimpse of the human tragedy".

The talks in Kabul, Afghanistan's capital city are being led by the U.N. coordinator for Afghanistan Erick de Mul and the Taleban's foreign affairs minister.

Also present is the U.N.'s deputy coordinator, as well as the local heads of UNICEF, the World Health Organisation, U.N. Centre for Human Settlement and the World Food Programme (WFP).

On the Taleban side are representatives from the ministries of planning, martyrs, repatriation, information and culture, and the interior.

"The talks after one day were said to have been extremely delicate and complicated. They focused on a number of different issues concerning U.N. humanitarian operations all over Afghanistan," said U.N. spokeswoman Stephanie Bunker from Islamabad, where the U.N. coordinates its Afghanistan operations.

The meeting follows de Mul's visit to the Taleban's stronghold in Kandahar last week, and comes against a backdrop of complaints by some U.N. aid workers of harassment at the hands of Taleban officials as they help starving and impoverished Afghans.

Deepening crisis

"The concern that the U.N. and its agencies are putting to the Taleban is that they need proper conditions to help people at a time when this crisis is truly deepening," says Bunker.

Erick de Mul's visit comes against a backdrop of alleged harassment of aid workers by the Taleban

"There are at least half a million internal refugees, people who have been displaced within Afghanistan, as well as millions who remain in their villages but have no water or food to eat. And the number of people affected is growing by the day, by the hour."

The meetings are scheduled to last another two days.

Afghanistan is stuck in the middle of its worst drought in recent memory, with failing crops and a falling water level, and is also being ravaged by a bloody civil war between the Mullah Mohannad Omar's Taleban and the United Front militia forces of Ahmed Shah Massoud.

Caught in the middle are thousands of international and local U.N. aid workers located across the nation, providing basic support for the people displaced by either drought or fighting.

But relations between the U.N. and the arch-conservative Taleban have long been strained, with differences arising out of the need for U.N. aid workers to often contravene the strict Islamic code of law laid down by the Taleban.

Among the Taleban edicts are rules that state all women must only walk in public in the company of a male chaperone while wearing a burqa, a garment that covers their bodies from head to toe.

"How can we have access to women when the rules state they must not mingle with any men unless they are in the company of a male chaperone?" says Bunker.

Projects under threat

The WFP recently said it would be forced to close down a subsidized bread project because the Taleban would not allow women to carry out a survey to assess who was most in need of food.

The WFP says women need to carry out the survey because under Taleban rules men are not allowed to enter homes to interview women.

Afghan girls are prevented from going to school under Taleban law

Nonetheless, Taleban senior officials expressed their reservations over the way the U.N. was conducting its operations in Afghan, and have asked for more say in the distribution of aid funds.

"The differences continue to grow between the two sides," journalist Kamal Hyder told CNN from Kabul.

"The Taleban feels it should have more say in how to implement some of these aid programs and, if possible, the government should be more involved with the non-government organizations (NGOs) that carry out some of the aid."

"So these talks are expected to be tough and while they are saying that they are optimistic, privately both admit it's not going to be easy to resolve these key issues and it remains to be seen whether they can be resolved at all."

Describing the extent of the drought, Hyder says rivers in the southern region of Afghanistan have completely dried up, forcing people to move to the larger cities.

Crops failing

"The crop assessment that is under way prelim reports indicate that crop levels have not been any better since last year,' he says.

"The water table in most parts of Afghanistan seems to be receding literally by the week if not by the day, and there is now considerable apprehension that it may affect the drinking water supply for all of the people of Afghanistan."

Many observers believe there is little hope for any improvement in the flow of aid into Afghanistan so long as the Taleban hold power, saying the Taleban has isolated the nation and its people from the rest of the world.

The Taleban sparked cries of outrage from the international community in March this year by destroying giant and ancient Buddha statues in Bamiyan.

The isolation is made more stark by a ban on anything more than humanitarian assistance, meaning development aid such as that needed to build irrigation systems for farms is outlawed.