Afghanistan News January 20, 2004

January 20, 2004

Afghans: U.S. Air Raid Kills 11 Villagers
By NOOR KHAN, Associated Press Writer
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan - A U.S. air raid in southern Afghanistan killed 11 villagers, including four children, Afghan officials said Monday. The U.S. military said it killed five militants in the weekend raid in insurgency-plagued Uruzgan province.

Sunday's incident came as American commanders and Afghan officials hunt for Taliban and al-Qaida suspects and try to improve security in the lawless south and east ahead of planned summer elections. Their task was highlighted anew by a bold daylight raid on a remote military base that injured three American soldiers.
Abdul Rahman, chief of Char Chino district in Uruzgan, said the attack occurred around 9 p.m. Sunday in Saghatho, a village where he said U.S. forces hunting for insurgents had carried out searches and made several arrests.

He said the victims were outside a house and a helicopter was hovering nearby when "a big plane came and dropped bombs." "They were simple villagers, they were not Taliban. I don't know why the U.S. bombed this home," he told an Associated Press reporter by telephone in the southern city of Kandahar.

The provincial governor, Jan Mohammed Khan, confirmed Rahman's account that four men, four children and three women were killed in the American attack. He said U.S. authorities told him they found ammunition in a search of the village. During the search, "the people were afraid, they started running," Khan said.

Lt. Col. Bryan Hilferty, a U.S. military spokesman, said a warplane killed five armed militants north of Deh Rawood, a town in Uruzgan where the American military has a base, but had no more information on the exact location or time, and no word of any civilian casualties. Saghatho is 25 miles north of Deh Rawood.

He said an AC-130 gunship attacked the men when they left a house frequented by insurgents. "They were running away from a known bad-guy site," Hilferty told AP, insisting military planners "carefully weigh the use of deadly force."

Two botched raids last month sparked outrage and drew U.N. warnings that civilian casualties could drive Afghans into the arms of militants who oppose U.S.-backed President Hamid Karzai. On Dec. 5, six children died when a wall fell on them during a nighttime assault on a complex in eastern Paktia province where the U.S. military seized hidden weapons caches. The next day, nine children were found dead in a field after an attack by an A-10 ground attack on a village in neighboring Ghazni province.

Both attacks were aimed at wanted militants, but neither target was killed or detained. American commanders had vowed to review their procedures after the raids.
The attack also brought to more than 50 the death toll in violence since the ratification of a post-Taliban constitution Jan. 4, most of them civilians. Three U.S. soldiers were wounded Sunday when about 15 insurgents opened fire on the Deh Rawood base with rocket-propelled grenades and machine-guns.

One attacker was killed when American soldiers returned fire. The soldiers, all injured by shrapnel, were in stable condition at the main U.S. military base at Bagram, north of Kabul.

Afghanistan's new constitution is supposed to help rebuild a state destroyed by nearly a quarter-century of war and bolster Karzai, the only declared candidate for the summer election. But the United Nations has warned that it can only organize the vote if the security situation improves quickly.

Hilferty said Afghan authorities and the 11,000-strong U.S.-led coalition force, which is hurrying to open a string of new bases in troubled areas, had control of the country, but couldn't prevent insurgents from mounting "localized" attacks. Sunday's daylight raid was "a sign of desperation," he said.

Mulla Omar not in Pakistan, says Arsala
The News International, Pakistan January 19
ISLAMABAD: Afghanistan is not sure about the presence of Mulla Omar and regrouping of Taliban in Pakistan, as alleged in various reports emanating from Kabul. "It was just a media report, which was repeated," said Hidayat Amin Arsala, Vice-President of Afghanistan, to a question about recent statement of Afghan President Hamid Karzai.

Addressing a joint press conference with Finance Minister Shaukat Aziz here on Sunday, Arsala said Pakistan has already denied such reports. He emphasised the importance of bilateral relations between the two countries. He said Pakistan is the second home for many Afghans, adding that he himself stayed here during the Jihad days. Pakistan has launched a major crackdown in the tribal areas to nab the remnants of Taliban and al-Qaeda. Since October 2001, Pakistan caught over 500 leading figures, which were handed over to the United States.

"A strong and stable Afghanistan is good for the region," said Shaukat Aziz. He extended all-out support for the Afghan reconstruction efforts. He said the construction work for Torkham-Jalalabad Road would commence in the next month. Pakistan would finance construction of this project out of $100 million facility pledged for Afghan reconstruction, he said. Shaukat also attached importance to sub-regional cooperation between Pakistan, Afghanistan and the Central Asian region.

The peace prospects between India and Pakistan have also brightened the economic viability of Turkmenistan, Afghanistan and Pakistan (TAP) gas pipeline project. Shaukat said Afghanistan has granted permission for opening branches of Pakistani banks at Jalalabad and Kandahar, and hoped further progress in the coming days. The National Bank of Pakistan (NBP) has already opened a branch in Kabul, while the Habib Bank Limited (HBL) is also in the process to open a branch there. He also announced that Afghanistan had agreed to grant three-month multiple entry visas to the Pakistani businessmen. Shaukat and Arsala discussed areas of broader cooperation between the two countries and underscored the importance of economic and trade relations.

EU seeks Afghanistan conference to shore up support
Reuters 01/19/2004
BRUSSELS - The European Union has called on the United Nations to hold a conference on Afghanistan to shore up the government as it swims against a rising tide of violence towards elections, a spokeswoman said on Monday.

The meeting would be a follow-up, two years on, to a donors' conference in Tokyo and a U.N.-backed agreement in the German city of Bonn that brought President Hamid Karzai to power after American-led forces toppled the radical Taliban regime.

"It would be something in between a donors' conference and a political conference," said Cristina Gallach, spokeswoman for the EU's foreign policy chief, Javier Solana. "We see this as a way to revitalise the international community's engagement."

Solana visited the Afghan capital of Kabul last week and will report back to foreign ministers of the 15-nation bloc who are due to meet in Brussels next Monday. U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan has been keen for a conference to regenerate support for a country whose political and economic transition is threatened by a resurgence of militia violence.

Gallach said the conference, which would be organised by the United Nations, was likely to be held in March and -- since the Bonn process is still under way -- hosted by Germany. According to a report last September by the aid agency Care and the New York-based Center on International Cooperation, just 40 percent of $5.2 billion in aid pledged in Tokyo had been released and nearly a quarter of that had been diverted from long-term reconstruction to short-term emergency needs.
Gallach said that in addition to the political and economic situation, the international conference would also address the security situation, which has cast doubts over Afghanistan's ambitious plan to hold its first free presidential poll in June.

Only 350,000 of an estimated 10 million voters have been registered so far because the United Nations considers vast areas of the country too dangerous to work in. About 12,000 U.S.-led troops are hunting remnants of the Taliban and their al Qaeda allies in Afghanistan, while a NATO-led force of 5,700 troops maintains security in Kabul and is preparing to expand its influence to lawless provinces.

Trade with Kabul to rise to $1bn
Dawn January 19, 2004
ISLAMABAD, Jan 18: -- [APP] -- Pakistan and Afghanistan on Saturday agreed to enhance bilateral trade upto US$1 billion besides establishing linkages in banking, roads, air and communications sectors. This was stated at a joint press conference by Finance Minister Shaukat Aziz and visiting Afghanistan Vice President Hidayat Amin Arsala here on Sunday evening.

Finance Minister Shaukat Aziz that on the economic side the trade was growing very rapidly and during last year, trade was US$620 million and this year we are expecting US$ one billion".

Shaukat Aziz said that transit trade with Afghanistan has also picked up and a lot of the bottlenecks with regard to transit trade are being addressed. "We also feel that the time has come that there is some investment in Afghanistan from Pakistan and our contractors and suppliers are very active in the country", he said.
About the US$100 million package for Afghanistan announced by Pakistan and its utilization, he said the Jalalabad-Torkham road will be constructed and tenders have been issued in this regard and construction will start next month.

The minister added that Pakistan has also announced construction projects for an academic block in Jalalabad and Kabul universities and a kidney centre in Jalalabad, an artificial limbs center in Kandahar and an information technology centre in Mazar-e-Sharif.

The minister said for the training of Afghans in banking, central banking and customs sectors, Pakistan will provide training facilities to Afghanistan people at Islamabad and Karachi. Pakistan is also working on the finalizing the technical feasibility study for a railway track from Chamman to Kandahar, that will make Kandahar a central place for transit trade to Central Asia, besides linking it with Karachi port.

Shaukat Aziz said "then we have the Gawadar port programme - a big initiative with the assistance of Asian Development Bank which will also connect Gawadar to Afghanistan and beyond.

He said Pakistan's banks are also active in Afghanistan. National Bank of Pakistan has already opened its branch in Kabul while Habib Bank has just obtained a license to open its branch and we have got permission to open bank branches in Kandahar and Jalalabad, he added.

PIA has already started three flights a week to Afghanistan and road, banking and communications links would open up Afghanistan for trade with the rest of the world, he said. This, he said, would also bring the Pakistan and Afghanistan economies closer to each other.

"We are also members of the Economic Cooperation Organization (ECO) and finance ministers meeting will be held here in Islamabad by the end of this month and finance minister from Afghanistan Ashraf Ghani is also coming to participate in it", he said.

Shaukat Aziz said that this is for the first time the ECO economic ministers are meeting to discuss ways and means to enhance cooperation between the member countries. Vice President of Afghanistan, Hidayat Amin Arsala said he was very pleased to visit Pakistan and "of course lot of us consider Pakistan to be the second home".

He also thanked Pakistan for hosting millions of Afghanistan refugees for several years on its soil. He said they are also pleased over the recent visit of the Prime Minister of Pakistan and Finance Minister Shaukat Aziz to Afghanistan. He termed the visit very successful.

Mr Arsala said this visit reflected the strong bonds between Afghanistan and Pakistan. He said he believed that stability in Afghanistan is good for every one and hoped that one day "we would be able to link the entire region in order to realize the potential of the region and that can be ensured through a stable Afghanistan and close cooperation between Afghanistan and Pakistan".

Hidayat Amin Arsala also called for continued contacts between the senior leaders of the two countries for further boosting bilateral relations. He also stressed the need for further increasing bilateral trade.

He said any help from Pakistan in the reconstruction of Afghanistan will be welcome. Replying to a question, Shaukat Aziz added that on the transit trade, Pakistan has reduced the number if items on the negative list and more items are being reduced. Shaukat Aziz said that Afghanistan is issuing three-month multiple visas to Pakistani businessmen.-APP (Associated Press of Pakistan)

UK's Standard Chartered opens for Afghan business
LONDON, Jan 19 (Reuters) - Britain's Standard Chartered Bank opened its first branch in war-battered Afghanistan on Monday, it said in a statement released here, the first western bank to set up in the post-Taliban era.

"This is a great opportunity to partner the reconstruction process and serve our customers ... We look forward to being able to offer our services where they can help the country and its people," the bank quoted country manager John Janes saying. Janes was attending an opening ceremony in Kabul.

Afghanitan's Western-backed government has licensed three foreign banks and the state-run National Bank of Pakistan was the first to open a branch when it launched business from a villa in Kabul in October.

The Aga Khan Fund's First MicroFinance Bank expects to open a branch in Afghanistan later this year. The banks are the first allowed into the country since before the Russian invasion of 1979, after which all financial institutions were nationalised. Standard Chartered's Kabul branch will offer deposit-taking, money transfers and trade services.

UN supports bid to prevent smuggling of Afghan children
UN News Service January 18
A United Nations spokesman in Kabul today announced the world body's support for a new drive to prevent smugglers from taking Afghan children to other countries where they are used for cheap labour.

Manoel de Almeida e Silva said UN agencies, working with government officials and a number of non-governmental organizations (NGOs), "have been working on a comprehensive set of essential measures aimed at curbing this illegal practice and raising awareness about the problem."

Meanwhile, steps are being taken to reunite children who had been deported from other countries with their families back in Afghanistan. The UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) are backing the operation, which since October has brought over 70 children -- mostly boys ranging in age from 5 to 15 -- back to Afghanistan.

In another development, a UNHCR spokesman today reported that 150 Afghans who survived December's devastating earthquake in Bam are back in their home country. The agency is providing them with cash, food and relief supplies while helping additional Afghan earthquake survivors to make their way home.

Canadian troops arrest 16, seize drugs in Kabul raid
Some suspects may have links with Al Qaeda 200 soldiers join Afghan police to capture drug lords
TERRY PEDWELL CANADIAN PRESS

KABUL—Canadian soldiers launched an early-morning raid yesterday on a compound in Kabul, arresting suspected terrorists and seizing drugs, cash and weapons in their first offensive action since arriving in Afghanistan last August.

The raid ended with the arrest of 16 men, ranging in age from 16 to 70, who are suspected of participating in the thriving drug trade that fuels terrorist organizations in Afghanistan.

Canadian military officials, citing intelligence sources, linked at least some of the men to Gulbuddin Hikmatyar, founder of the radical Muslim terrorist group Hizb-I Islami Gulbuddin, an organization with long-established ties to Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.

Two AK-47 rifles were seized during the raid, along with several large plastic bags stuffed with unknown quantities of money and drugs.

After quietly surrounding the compound in the city's south end, it took just seconds for the heavily armed soldiers to scale its three-metre-high mud brick walls and rush the buildings inside.

Shouts of "Get down, get down" could be heard from the soldiers as the compound's 49 still-sleepy residents met their uninvited guests.

"Over here, over here," yelled one soldier after discovering several men huddled close to an outhouse in one corner of the filthy courtyard. Guns were pointed, doors smashed open and children sent fleeing into their mothers' arms in what seemed like a frenzy of activity after days of calm preparation.

"This is the type of operation that we train for over and over again back in Canada," said Maj. John Vass, commander of the Royal Canadian Regiment's Parachute Company.

"It was a great feeling for the soldiers. They finally got to do a live-fire raid."

Nearly 200 soldiers, in concert with Kabul police, launched the raid with the hope of capturing some of the city's most notorious drug lords.

Only one shot was fired: a shotgun blast to open a locked door. A second blast would have been heard, had the gun not inexplicably jammed. Where the shotgun failed, the shoulder of a burly infantryman was successful in clearing a passageway.

One soldier was injured slightly when he fell into a deep, open sewer hole in the darkened street outside the compound. Until now, British soldiers have been the only international forces directly targeting terrorists and drug operations in Kabul.

That all changed with "Operation Tsunami," said Lt.-Col. Don Denne, the commanding officer at Canadian Forces' Camp Julien, who was in constant radio contact with front-line soldiers during the raid.

"If there's one message that will be hoisted in by any criminal element ... it's going to be that there's more than just one player in town," Denne said afterward.
"We're now playing."

As the operation was completed, seven confused-looking children who appeared to range in age from about two to 12 were allowed to leave the centre building, shivering as they walked barefoot across the muddy, feces-covered courtyard to the corner outhouse.

The suspects were taken away, transported in Canadian Forces light armoured vehicles to be interrogated at a police station about two kilometres away.
Later, several of the men were turned over to investigators at Camp Julien, the largest Canadian Forces base in Afghanistan, where nearly 2,000 soldiers are housed as part of the International Security Assistance Force, or ISAF.

"This will go a long way to assisting the Kabul city police in gaining the confidence of the local population," predicted Vass. "They were also a key player and were also responsible for taking down a possible drug node (operation) or a possible terrorist."

Dostum eyes Afghan defence post
via Aljazeera 19 January 2004
[AFP]--Afghanistan's powerful northern commander General Abd al-Rashid Dostum has revealed he is seeking a senior military position in President Hamid Karzai's government. His comments came as fresh fighting between US-led forces and suspected Taliban fighters left one rebel dead and three US soldiers wounded on Sunday.

"The post is not important but I would like to work with the government," Dostum told reporters on Sunday in Shirbirghan city in the northern province of Jawzjan. "I will ask Karzai to appoint me as defence minister, army chief-of-staff or give me a military position with 20,000 soldiers," Dostum said.

On Saturday, Karzai said he was open to giving Dostum a senior position. "If he asks for a higher position in the Ministry of Defence, it is a legitimate request and we are thinking about it," he said.

Since October, Kabul officials had said they were considering offering Dostam and his rival, Tajik commander Atta Muhammad, posts in the central government in an attempt to pull them out of the north and curb their rivalry which frequently erupts into deadly clashes between their respective militias.

An Uzbek general, Dostum controls the Junbish-i-Melli-i-Islami party (National Islamic Movement) and leads a majority Uzbek militia known for its ferocity during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. Muhammad controls the largely Tajik Jamiat-i-Islami force.

Following the fall of the Taliban regime in late 2001, Dostum was appointed deputy defence minister. In mid-2002, he left the role and became a special adviser to Karzai on northern Afghanistan.

Junbish has long been fighting to control northern Afghanistan with Jamiat-i-Islami, principally composed of former anti-Taliban Northern Alliance fighters who now dominate Karzai's government.

Efforts to disarm and demobilise Junbish and Jamiat fighters have been under way since November under a pilot disarmament, demobilisation and rehabilitation programme. The disarmament of militias loyal to regional commanders is a critical issue for Karzai's government, as it seeks to extend its control into the provinces.
Dostum was in Sheberghan on Sunday to open a new non-government television station, Aina TV, which will broadcast to the main northern provinces of Jawzjan, Balkh, Faryab and Sari Pul.

Meanwhile, a rebel was killed and three US soldiers injured in a weekend attack on an American base in central Afghanistan by 15 fighters using heavy machine guns and grenades.

The three US troops were hit by shrapnel during fighting on Sunday at the base of the US-led force in Deh Rawood in troubled central Uruzgan province, military spokesman Lieutenent Colonel Bryan Hilferty said in Kabul.

"We returned fire, killing one of the attackers," Hilferty said. The 15 rebel fighters used rocket-propelled grenades and AK-47 rifles to attack the troops, he said. The direct attack on the US-led forces base from heavy machine gun fire was uncommon as insurgents have mostly used rockets in their attacks against troops, Hilferty added.

He would not speculate on the background of the attackers. Similar attacks have been blamed on remnants of the ousted Taliban regime, their allies from the al-Qaida network and loyalists of renegade warlord Gulb al-Din Hekmatyar. The 12,000-strong US-led force is now in its third year of hunting rebel holdouts, mainly along the 2400km border with Pakistan.

Karzai Releases More Taliban Prisoners
Associated Press January 19, 5:09 AM
President Hamid Karzai ordered the release Sunday of more former Taliban fighters, a highly symbolic move that could boost his standing and undermine holdouts from the ousted hardline Islamic regime. Karzai issued a decree saying all Afghans detained at the northern Sheberghan prison and not considered dangerous should be set free immediately.

It was unclear how many inmates were affected. Local officials said the jail holds more than 400 suspected Afghan Taliban. The government hopes the move, like the return of millions of Afghans from exile and the release last week of dozens of Pakistanis who fought with the Taliban, will help heal the wounds left by the latest episode in the country's almost quarter-century of conflict.

"They are Afghans. They have every right to a peaceful and respectable life in the new Afghanistan," presidential spokesman Jawid Luddin told The Associated Press. "The time for making people suffer and jailing them without reason is over."

Thousands of fighters captured when U.S. and allied Afghan forces pushed the Taliban out of power were disarmed and sent home to their villages. Many more were killed. But hundreds remained in the jails of commanders from the Northern Alliance faction such as Abdul Rashid Dostum, the ethnic Uzbek warlord whose power base is Sheberghan.

Dostum's spokesman, Faizullah Zaki, said Sunday that Karzai's decree would be respected but declined to comment further. Luddin said the release was unrelated to a request from Dostum for a top job at the Defense Ministry.

The prisoner release is the latest attempt by Karzai to ease tensions ahead of presidential elections to take place in June under a new post-Taliban constitution. Karzai has said repeatedly that only a handful of Taliban leaders were to be regarded as terrorists, appealing to rank-and-file supporters to throw their energy into reconstructing the impoverished country.

The released prisoners could also bolster his standing in the former Taliban strongholds in southern Afghanistan, where anti-government insurgents have launched a string of deadly attacks since the constitution was passed, killing at least 45 people. It was unclear when Pakistanis held at Sheberghan also might be freed. Luddin said they were a "separate case" whose fate would be decided later.

Forty-nine were released Thursday in a gesture of goodwill after the visit of Pakistani Prime Minister Zafarullah Khan Jamali. Jamali pledged to free Afghans in Pakistani jails. Pakistan's deputy ambassador, Abdel Hamid Afridi, said then that more than 500 Pakistanis remain in Afghan prisons, most of them in Sheberghan.

Taleban drugs control 'effective'
BBC News 19 January, 2004
The Taleban's fight against opium production in Afghanistan was the "most effective" drug control policy of modern times, research suggests. During the 1990s, Afghanistan was the main source of the world's illicit heroin supply.

But a UK study has found a Taleban crackdown on drugs led to global heroin production falling by two-thirds in 2001. However, it notes that such draconian methods could not e used elsewhere.

Most Afghan heroin production was smuggled illegally to the West and to neighbouring Pakistan and Iran. But from July 2000 until its downfall over a year later, the Taleban regime enforced a ban on cultivating opium poppy - from which heroin is manufactured.

The new report, written by criminologist Professor Graham Farrell from Loughborough University, has not yet been published, but the BBC has seen its findings. Professor Farrell said the Taleban's methods were successful because of the manner in which the fight was implemented at a grassroots level.

"It was a set of fairly simple techniques - the threat of eradication and the punishment of transgressors with fairly harsh punishments," he told the BBC's World Today programme.

"What was particularly interesting was the manner in which it was implemented at the local level." Local community groups and religious leaders were made to implement the Taleban's policies and could be punished themselves if anyone was found cultivating opium poppies in their area, he said.

Farmers who refused to comply with the policies had their faces blackened and were jailed. In extreme cases they were paraded through the streets. The study said the result was that poppy growing in Taleban-controlled areas almost ceased and that globally, the heroin supply fell by 65%.

But since the Taleban was deposed, poppy cultivation has increased sharply. Mr Farrell said the success of the strategy raised important questions about drug policy and policing. But he said it would not be desirable nor possible to take such draconian measures elsewhere.

No disunity over UK policy to tackle Afghan drugs trade
Financial Times (London) January 16, 2004
by Bill Rammell,
Foreign Office Minister with responsibility for drugspolicy Gareth Thomas, Parliamentary Under-Secretary for International Development

Your article "UK trains Afghans in anti-drugs drive" (January 10) reported on divisions in UK drugs policy in Afghanistan. There are no divisions. The UK has committed Pounds 70m over three years to improve law enforcement and economic opportunities to help poor families live without depending on poppy production. Eradication of poppy fields is part of that law enforcement activity and we agree that for it to be most effective it should be directed at areas where farmers have access to alternative livelihoods.

Our support is starting to make an impact as the recent operation of the Afghan special narcotics force, to which the UK has provided some funding and advice, has shown. UK Customs officials have been training and equipping Afghan counter narcotics police in interdiction activities, resulting in some promising seizures and arrests. The Department for International Development is also spending more than Pounds 20m over the next three years on specific programmes to help poor families live without opium production.

However, more needs to be done. That is why we are organising, with the Afghans and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, an international conference in Kabul in February to encourage our international partners to step up their efforts.

Afghan Constitution
New York Times – Opinion 01/19/2004 Salahuddin Rabbani
Re "Hurray! A Constitution! (Tell It to the Warlords)" (Letter From Asia, news article, Jan. 14): Regarding Afghanistan's warlords, you write that reportedly when Abdul Rasul Sayyaf and Burhanuddin Rabbani (who is my father and the former Afghan president) "pushed too hard for their desires in the Constitution," they were reminded by the United States ambassador and the United Nations special envoy "that they could face trial for war crimes."

In fact, the broad participation of delegates and their desire to reach a consensus resulted in the successful ratification of the Constitution. To suggest that the grand council was successful as a result of outside interference negates the impartiality of the United Nations and the United States, the country that epitomizes the essence of democracy.

What we Afghans need at this time is the support of our international friends to bring us close to each other. Declaring one section of the Afghan people as warlords and the other as democrats or liberals doesn't help Afghanistan. Afghans need reconciliation, coexistence and pluralism more than anything else at this critical juncture.
SALAHUDDIN RABBANI Counselor, Permanent Mission of Afghanistan to the United Nations New York, Jan. 14, 2004

Floods displace at least a thousand families around Herat
IRIN 01/19/2004
KABUL - More than a thousand families have been displaced and many residential areas and agricultural fields affected after severe rainfall and flooding in the western province of Herat. According to the Afghan Red Crescent Society (ARCS) Thursday's flooding affected Guzara district and some parts of Herat city, the provincial capital. In addition to the families that lost their homes, thousands of acres of agricultural land have been completely destroyed.

"Over 500 families have lost their homes and have been displaced in Kul, Becharkhy and Shamaka villages of Guzara, while around 500 other families lost their homes in Herat city as well," Nooruddin Ahmadi, head of ARCS' western region, told IRIN from Herat on Monday. Ahmadi added that the disaster had also destroyed many bridges, schools and mosques. "Around 80 million sq metres of agricultural land had also been destroyed," he maintained.

ARCS said affected families were in dire need of food and non- food items, mainly tents. "They have taken refuge in neighbouring villagers' homes and food, clothing and shelter are desperately needed," Ahmadi explained.

The United Nations in Kabul reported that a disaster emergency task force had decided that a joint UN and government mission would be sent to the affected villages. "The exact number of displaced people is not known at this time but if a humanitarian intervention is necessary, immediate assistance is available," Manoel de Almeida e Silva, a spokesperson of United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) told IRIN.

Latest ARCS reports indicated that a needs assessment had been conducted and food and other items would be distributed to the most severely affected families on Tuesday. "We are meeting today with UNAMA and PRTs [US-led civil military Provincial Reconstruction Teams] to see what any of the aid parties can contribute to ARCS emergency response to be distributed tomorrow," Ahmadi said.

Meanwhile, UNAMA reported that heavy snowfalls on 15 and 16 January with high winds and avalanches closed the Salang tunnel, the key humanitarian route from Kabul to the country's northern provinces. "All UN road missions are temporarily suspended for travel via the Salang as well as through the Shiber Pass [east of Salang], until further notice, as there is a possibility of more snow. Road movement to Mazar and Konduz via both roads is therefore not possible at this point," the UN spokesperson noted.

The Salang tunnel was officially re-opened for 24-hour service on 28 December after many months of reconstruction that began in June last year. The Salang road and tunnel reopened to small vehicles on Sunday, and according to ACTED (Agency for Technical Cooperation and Development) traffic is alternating in both directions, as only one lane has been cleared. The French NGO, which is responsible for the safety of Salang traffic together with the Afghan ministry of public works, announced that normal operations of the tunnel and roads that lead from it, would resume soon.