01/29/2002
EDITORIAL NUMBER=0-09673

HUMANITARIAN EFFORTS

Military efforts continue in Afghanistan. American forces continue to search out and either capture or kill Taleban and al-Qaida terrorists. At Hazar Qadam, the U-S destroyed a very large cache of arms and ammunition. Twenty-seven Taleban were captured and are being detained.

But there’s more involved. The U-S is also undertaking what U-S Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld described as "one of the largest, if not the largest, humanitarian assistance programs in history."

There is now a flow of aid to the Afghan people in the form of food, medicine, and agricultural resources. This would not have been possible without the swift action of U.S.-led coalition forces. They dealt with the al-Qaida and the Taleban.

But their operations also included more than one-hundred sixty flights to deliver two and a half million individual food rations, over seven-hundred-forty metric tons of wheat, and more than seventy-thousand blankets. In effect, the U-S led coalition has been engaged in a two-front war in Afghanistan – one military, the other humanitarian. Success is being achieved on both fronts.

As Defense Secretary Rumsfeld said: "We helped to establish a security environment in which various international relief organizations have been able to conduct operations." The coalition has helped to open eleven major convoy routes and nine Afghan airfields. Access is now available for thousands of tons of food and other humanitarian relief that must be trucked to vulnerable populations in isolated parts of Afghanistan.

The U-S and others are now supplementing emergency relief with other assistance to repair the country’s infrastructure and help the agricultural sector. This is an international effort. As Defense Secretary Rumsfeld said, "thanks to the coalition partners, particularly Jordan and Russia, Spain and South Korea, hospitals have been established complete with surgeons and supplies."

Afghanistan’s new interim government is up and running. The leadership positions have been filled. More than half of the provincial governors have been named. The Afghan people are beginning to re-gain control of their country.

Afghanistan has endured more than two decades of war, drought, oppression and deprivation. It is now on the road to recovery.