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Aid piled on Afghan borders ready to roll

With winter fast approaching, the need to hasten aid supplies is growing

By CNN's Marianne Bray

(CNN) -- Aid agencies are poised to deliver huge shipments of aid as soon as they are cleared to enter Afghanistan.

Supplies have been positioned all along Afghanistan's borders and relief groups have told CNN they are sending teams to assess how secure some of the country's key towns are following the Taliban's retreat.

U.N. aid has already begun rolling into parts of this central Asian country after the dramatic and rapid fall of Kabul, Herat and Mazar-e Sharif this week to the opposition Northern Alliance.

On Wednesday the key Uzbek border town of Termez reopened a key relief route -- a river crossing -- after four years, opening up supplies to the northern and most devastated part of the country.

Some workers too have begun returning to their Afghan bases in an urgent bid to get in aid before snow closes mountain roads and passes.

Even before September 11, relief agencies had warned that Afghanistan was on the verge of widespread famine after more than two decades of war and the worst drought in 30 years.

The United Nations says up to a quarter of Afghanistan's 24 million people depend on food aid. In Kabul alone, half of the 1.2 million residents rely on U.N. aid.

Since the U.S.-led air raids begun, millions of Afghans have fled their homes, many for the countryside, making it even more difficult for relief agencies to deliver aid.

While U.S. planes dropped ready-to-eat meals in the early days of bombing, the war has hurt some aid supplies. American bombs hit a Red Cross warehouse in October.

Ready to go back

The Afghan people have already been hit by decades of civil war

International aid workers left Afghanistan in droves following the September 11 attacks in America.

But with the alliance laying claims to around half of this country, some aid workers are rejoining Afghan nationals who manned the offices during the U.S.-led aid raids.

Medecins sans Frontieres said on Wednesday three staffers reached Mazar-e Sharif to assess the needs of the city's hospitals and health centers, as well as nearby refugee camps.

Senior U.N. officials are going to Kabul in the next few days to see whether it is safe for international staff to return, says UNHCR spokesperson Yusuf Hassan in Islamabad.

"Not only are we ready to send them back, but we are also ready to deploy extra emergency staff as soon as we get the security clearance," said Hassan.

The United Nations have re-opened their offices in Kabul and Herat with local staff. Their most urgent priorities are to clothe and feed people as well as clear landmines.

Frightened by lawlessness

But even as the Taliban retreat, the UNICEF and the U.N. World Food Program (WFP) say they are halting shipments amid reports of looting and lawlessness.

Hundreds of people were reportedly killed and tons of supplies looted in Mazar-e-Sharif since the fundamentalist Taliban abandoned the city last week.

There have also been reports of chaos in other parts of the country as opposition alliance fighters move into the new territory.

The alliance seized eight trucks from a UNICEF convoy in Mazar-e-Sharif this weekend.

One driver and possibly two from an aid convoy in the area are missing and feared dead, Alfred Ironside, UNICEF spokesman in New York, told Reuters news agency.

Meanwhile WFP truckers have not delivered supplies from the Pakistani towns of Peshawar and Quetta this week, says Lindsey Davies, a spokesperson for WFP.

They are worried about the unpredictability of the situation given that the hard-line Taliban are heading back into their southern heartlands.

The delay calls into question whether the aid groups can deliver food to the country in the crucial weeks before the start of winter.

Confident

But the WFP says that despite the Pakistani impasse, they are still using Iran, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and the newly-opened Uzbekistan corridors to funnel food in.

And they are saying that the dramatic developments on the ground could offer stability and a more secure environment for supplying aid.

Afghanistan's U.N. special envoy Lakhdar Brahimi has already suggested using Mazar-e Sharif, close to Uzbekistan, as a northern hub to rush in food, shelter and clothing.

The WFP has also airlifted 53 trucks from Sweden fitted with snow-clearing equipment for the first time so that the group's 2,000 trucks can still get food to Afghanis during winter, says Davies.

This is pertinent as aid groups say within the next few weeks it will be snowing heavily in northern Afghanistan, with many parts of the country cut off.