Thursday October 11 6:17 PM ET

US AID Chief Defends Food Airdrops

By EUN-KYUNG KIM, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Bush administration disputed arguments by some humanitarian groups that who say U.S. military airdrops of food in Afghanistan (news - web sites) are ineffective and blur the line between military and aid groups.

The food rations make up a small part of the humanitarian efforts for the Afghans, but they will be ``a life saver'' for those who receive them, said Andrew Natsios, administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development, the agency overseeing the government's relief efforts.

Natsios said the mix of military with ministrations in Afghanistan does not differ from past cases of U.S. intervention.

``Anybody who's been in Bosnia, Macedonia, Kosovo, Somalia - you go through all of the major emergencies in the last decade, all of them involved the military,'' he said Thursday.

Most independent aid groups realize that ``in complex emergencies like we're facing in Afghanistan, the military is part of the terrain, it's part of what's going on,'' Natsios said. ``It's the way it is, and if you can't deal with that, you shouldn't be doing that kind of work.''

The U.S. military has dropped 35,000 daily ration packets each day since the airstrikes began Sunday. The effort has been ridiculed by some groups as ``military propaganda'' and potentially dangerous in a nation littered with land mines after more than two decades of conflict.

But Natsios said the areas where food is being dropped was chosen partially because they have very few land mines.

The areas also were picked because they are difficult to reach by land, especially during winter months. Some regions targeted already show signs of malnutrition.

Natsios said U.S. relief efforts in Afghanistan ``predated any military involvement and was huge.''

At a Senate hearing Wednesday, Nicolas de Torrente, executive director of Doctors without Borders-USA, said food drops by partisans in a fight can jeopardize aid workers who must maintain their neutrality.

-- Anonymous, October 11, 2001

Answers

I hope this article is correct, about Andrew Natsios being the A.I.D. Administrator, rather than the head of the Agency's Foreign Disaster Relief Office. I think he's a good man, though I never actually worked with him. I was in the computer shop and the Disaster Relief Office was one of the client areas I was supporting. However, he came in to head the Office just as I was leaving for the Defense Dept. in '89.

-- Anonymous, October 12, 2001