U.N. Food convoy arrives in Afghanistan capital

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- The first World Food Program convoy of food arrived Monday for the hungry in the Afghan capital Kabul, where people fear a U.S. military strike in the wake of the Sept. 11 terror attacks in the United States. \nEight trucks carrying 218 tons of wheat made it to Kabul, said Khalid Mansour, the World Food Program information officer in neighboring Pakistan. The U.N. agency feeds nearly two-thirds of Kabul's 1 million people. \nThe United Nations has been warning of a humanitarian catastrophe within Afghanistan, a country already ravaged by relentless war and the worst drought in living memory. \nKenzo Oshima, the U.N. undersecretary general for humanitarian affairs, arrived in the Pakistani capital Islamabad Monday and met with President Pervez Musharraf. \n"There is a large number of people who need food, water, shelter and other life saving material inside Afghanistan," Oshima said, calling for more international aid. "Much more needs to be done." \nThe food convoy was the first to reach Kabul since the terror attacks and the subsequent pullout from Afghanistan of all international United Nations staff. \nMansour said the arrival of the wheat means there is enough food in their stocks to last until end of October. \nSaying security "is always a concern" the WFP has moved smaller quantities of food into Afghanistan from three different directions: Pakistan, and the former Soviet republics of Tajikistan and Turkmenistan, which also border Afghanistan. \nFor the WFP, concerns are twofold: pilfering of its supplies and the safe arrival of its convoys. Mansour said the convoy's arrival in Kabul was half the battle. \nThe bone-jarring trip across 120 miles of war-ruined roads that resemble a dried riverbed took two days. \nThe WFP operates 150 bakeries for Kabul's poor, but Mansour said it was distributing the wheat to individual families rather than to the bakeries, a change aimed to save time and make disturbances less likely. \nThe shipment was "distributed immediately among the people who needed it," said WFP spokesman Michael Huggins. He said the agency sent another 500 tons later Monday and would ship out the same amount Tuesday. \nHuggins said the WFP has received word that food prices have increased by 20-24 percent in Kabul since the attacks, "so these supplies are even more important." \nThe United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, or UNHCR, has put out an emergency appeal for $500 million in anticipation of a mass exodus from Afghanistan for fear the United States will attack the ruling Taliban, which has refused to hand over suspected terrorist Osama bin Laden. However, the borders of all the neighboring countries are sealed. \n"The Afghans are basically a trapped people," said Rupert Colville, UNHCR's information officer in the southwestern Pakistani city of Quetta.