By Charlene Porter
Washington File Staff Writer

Washington -- Offices operated by the United Nations refugee agency were overtaken by armed Taliban soldiers October 31, the latest in a series of raids on humanitarian facilities by the ruling Afghan authorities. The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) reports that no staff members were in the office in Spin Boldak near Afghanistan's southeast border with Pakistan when it was seized.

"This serious violation of UNHCR premises came just hours after a meeting between High Commissioner Ruud Lubbers and the Taliban Ambassador to Pakistan," according to a UNHCR humanitarian update issued October 31. At that meeting, Lubbers made a request for the Taliban to stop interference with UNHCR property and staff to allow its relief work to proceed.

UNHCR is among the leading humanitarian agencies providing assistance to some 4 million refugees who have fled Afghanistan for neighboring countries in recent years. The outpouring of the Afghan population dates back 20 years when the nation fought a war with the Soviet Union. Ongoing internal strife drove more Afghans from their homes after that war ended in 1989. In recent years, food shortages caused by a drought in the region have caused further population displacement.

The Taliban has also targeted the World Food Program (WFP) on several occasions, the latest on October 29 when Kabul offices of an affiliated organization were attacked. WFP reports that four guards on duty at the relief office were beaten and equipment was removed.

"Looting is becoming more frequent and further incidents were reported by other aid agencies in the Afghan capital this week," WFP spokesman Khaled Mansour told reporters in Islamabad.

WFP was among the first humanitarian organizations to report Taliban harassment. Two of its grain warehouses -- one in Kabul, the other in Kandahar -- were seized by the Afghan regime October 16. The Taliban relinquished control of the Kabul facility within days, but still holds on to the Kandahar storage site. After more than two weeks, WFP reports now that it has received unconfirmed reports that the grain -- 1,600 tons of it -- is gone, along with several vehicles also used in the relief effort.

WFP proceeds with its work despite these trials. In the final week of October, 10,000 tons of food were distributed in Afghanistan.

The attacks have come just as humanitarian agencies gear up their longstanding relief activities in Afghanistan to prepare the population for rapidly approaching winter. The World Food Program estimates that up to 7 million people could face food shortages, and even starvation, this winter.

Amidst that urgency, however, the groups have been subject to looting and attacks, sometimes directly attributed to Taliban, and sometimes conducted by unidentified looters.

"The biggest obstacle to getting food and medicine to the people of Afghanistan is the Taliban," White House spokesman Ari Fleischer told reporters at a briefing October 31.

The International Organization for Migration (IOM) reopened one office in Mazar-e-Sherif in the final days of October, but 2,000 blankets intended for delivery in camps for the internally displaced were gone. The facility had first been looted October 15. The IOM also experienced a Taliban-forced shutdown at another office in Kunduz. It too has now been allowed to reopen, but vehicles taken from the relief organization have not been returned.

The Swedish Committee for Afghanistan (SCA) has been another Taliban target. Operating a broad network of offices, clinics and schools primarily in the north, the SCA was ordered to close and stop some of its humanitarian activities October 19, but now has reopened. Even in the face of these difficulties, an SCA spokesman told the Integrated Regional Information Network of the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs that humanitarian activities are still operating at "pretty close to 100 percent."

"The emphasis is to get as much assistance, as much food into Afghanistan as possible, and that's being done through the international relief agencies, which we are supporting," Douglas Hunter, acting U.S. deputy assistant secretary of state for Population, Refugees and Migration, said on the program Dialogue. "The United States is a major contributor both of money but also of food -- something like 80 percent of the food that the World Food Program delivers comes from the United States."