Security, funding worries trouble Afghan food aid

KABUL (Reuters) - The United Nations' biggest ever winter food aid plan for Afghanistan faces new security threats and the global financial crisis could pressure funding for food relief to Afghans in 2009, a U.N. official said on Tuesday.

The U.N. World Food Programme (WFP) has now completed some 80 percent of its annual food distribution ahead of the winter and will eventually deliver 36,000 metric tons of food to about 950,000 Afghans before much of the country becomes inaccessible because of heavy snow and freezing temperatures.

"The food security situation in Afghanistan is structurally challenging, the high food prices, insecurity, drought have made it much worse and have put a number of people in a food insecurity crisis," Anthony Banbury, WFP regional director for Asia, told a news conference.

In the past year, more than 1,000 Afghans died in the harshest winter in living memory, and that was followed by widespread drought which hurt harvests and led to food shortages.

Compounding the food shortfall, there have been 26 armed attacks on commercial vehicles carrying WFP supplies since January, the agency said, killing two people and wounding 10.

The security challenge was "worse now than it has been in the past," Banbury said, but close cooperation with the Afghan government and Afghan army was helping WFP reach priority areas.

"For the convoys headed to Afghanistan, the attacks have been very well organized with large numbers of attackers and I do not believe it is common criminality, it's an organized militant group," said Banbury who could not rule-out Taliban involvement.

Despite attacks on the road between Peshawar in Pakistan and Afghanistan, WFP vehicles were still using the route with assistance from the Afghan army and police. Banbury added, however, that alternative routes from Iran in the west or routes from the north were being considered.

FUNDING FEARS

Although funding for the WFP's winter operations in Afghanistan have not been affected by the global financial crisis, Banbury expressed concern about funding from donor countries to aid operations in spring 2009.

"We really need the money, without it we will face the very unpleasant prospect of cutting assistance to millions of Afghans and right now we're very concerned about March and April ... we're definitely not out of the woods," Banbury told Reuters.

Added to the pressures on donor funding are high commodity prices, particularly for wheat, which still poses a challenge to the WFP in Afghanistan, despite prices coming down from last year.

In September, wheat cost 30 afghanis per kilo (60 cents), compared to 19-21 afghanis for the same period in 2007, according to WFP figures.

The escalation in wheat prices in Afghanistan has meant households in some areas of the country are spending 78 percent of their incomes on food, compared with 43 percent in 2005.

"A lot of people in Afghanistan have a very tough life in the best of circumstances. When high food prices, insecurity and drought are added on top of it, those factors push people toward a crisis situation," Banbury said.

(Editing by Jeremy Laurence)