By Kathryn McConnell
Washington File Staff Writer

Washington -- With food moving into Afghanistan at a rate of 55 million tons a month, never before has so much food moved so quickly to avert a crisis, says Andrew Natsios, director of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).

Yet while adequate amounts of food are getting into Afghanistan, the biggest problem remains securing the food to get it to all the people who need it, say Natsios and the heads of two leading international organizations working in the area.

At a November 30 panel on events in Afghanistan, Natsios said the United Nations' World Food Program (WFP) has a well-developed logistics plan to distribute the food. It has mobilized 2,000 trucks to carry food into the country -- larger trucks to cross borders and smaller trucks to deliver loads from warehouses to villages. The plan includes how much food is to go to each county. The WFP is doing "an exceptional job," Natsios said.

He said that most of the food distributed so far has been in smaller quantities, including some purchased locally. Larger amounts from the United States will begin arriving within days, he said.

He added that USAID has funneled money to NGO accounts to purchase housing materials for thousands. The mud houses to be completed by December will save many internally displaced families from the arctic-like winter, he said.

WFP Director Catherine Bertini, on the panel with Natsios, said her organization is reaching five million of the targeted six million people inside Afghanistan who need food. Another 1.5 million Afghans outside the country are targeted, she said. She said people living in the central highlands are receiving pre-winter distributions of three months of food because later distributions to them may become impossible.

Bertini added that expatriate staff are beginning to work inside the country and that WFP is working to reestablish ties with the 150 local nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) helping with food distribution. Until now, only local WFP staff worked "very bravely" distributing food, she said. House-to-house distribution in Kabul will begin in a few days, she added.

Bertini said Afghan women staffers began to return to WFP the week of November 19. "Women hadn't worked for five years," she added. Two thousand women are resuming a house-to-house survey to get up-to-date information on where the most vulnerable people are in terms of food needs. A group of women is also resuming work in a "widow's bakery," she said.

Bertini said that as soon as schools open, food will be distributed to girls and boys. Another future goal will be a food-for-work program, she said.

Besides security, winter conditions on roads is another factor that could impede delivery. Bertini said that Canadian and Swedish armed forces have offered to assist with moving food over snowy roads.

Natsios added that bureaucratic problems in Tajikistan that were slowing the food deliveries from that country to Afghanistan had just been resolved after he spoke with the Tajik president.

Also on the panel was Refugee International President Kenneth Bacon, who said security for aid workers was deteriorating. He called for an international peacekeeping force in Afghanistan "to establish a beachhead" to allow more aid workers to come into the country. "It will be hard to establish a functional government and do reconstruction without more security," he said. He said factional fighting has increased in some parts of the country.

Because of several years of drought, civil war and Taliban rule, people in Afghanistan were facing hunger well before the current phase of war, Natsios said. He said 10 of the 12 indicators of famine existed in the country before September 11.

He said "agriculture reconstruction" must begin now so that the people of Afghanistan will have food beyond winter. He said because people ate seeds, the priority is locating enough seeds of the right varieties for planting. Other tasks ahead include rebuilding irrigation systems, animal herds and roads for moving food to market, he said.