http://www.boston.com/dailynews/166/world/Poor_Afghans_alarmed_as_United:.shtml

Poor Afghans alarmed as United Nations prepares to stop bread distribution

By Amir Zia, Associated Press, 6/15/2001 06:28

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) Impoverished Afghans flocked to rickety old bakeries in the Afghan capital Friday to receive their last delivery of subsidized bread as the U.N. food program and the Taliban failed to resolve their differences over hiring women to conduct a poverty survey.

The closure of most of the World Food Program bakeries is a major setback for humanitarian relief efforts in the war- and drought-torn country. At least 282,000 people eligible to receive subsidized bread will be deprived of a crucial food supply.

''We made the last offer yesterday. Now the Taliban have to come back to us,'' Gerard van Dijk, the World Food Program's representative for Afghanistan, told The Associated Press.

The Taliban accused the United Nations of being rigid by rejecting their offer to have women already employed by the Taliban conduct the hunger survey.

''To give employment to 31 women, they are depriving nearly 300,000 people of their bread,'' said Saaduddin Saeed, the Taliban's planning minister. ''Do you call it justice?''

In Geneva, food program spokeswoman Christiane Berthiaume told reporters Friday that the bakeries' closure had been postponed for several days because the Taliban had asked to continue negotiations.

However, she said the bakeries would be unable to make bread on Saturday because they lack flour since they had expected to close.

''If the negotiations succeed, we will furnish flour to the bakeries again,'' Berthiaume said.

She said van Dijk would stay in Kabul until Tuesday to continue the negotiations.

The impasse is over a poverty survey needed for a new list of eligible bread recipients. Women must conduct the survey because only they can enter people's homes to assess their poverty something men could never do in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan, where men are strictly forbidden to view unrelated women.

The Taliban want women employed in the militia's health ministry to conduct the survey. The World Food Program wants its own employees to conduct the survey, in the interest of impartiality.

At least 800,000 people have fled their homes in the past year in Afghanistan because of drought and civil war. The bakeries are the single largest World Food Program project there, with an $8 million annual budget.

''We already get little food ... We will starve to death if they shut this bakery,'' said Royia Bibi, a 70-year-old Afghan women, wiping away tears with her wrinkled hand. Barefoot and clad in dirty clothes, Bibi is among 358 cardholders who receive bread at a bakery in Bagh-e-Qazi, a poor neighborhood in the center of the capital Kabul.

''I don't know what we will eat tomorrow,'' she said.

The bakery impasse has underscored rapidly worsening relations between the Taliban and international aid organizations, which have accused the militia of harassing aid workers and hampering relief operations.

-- Anonymous, June 15, 2001