RIYADH, 15 October — The Kingdom has launched a massive campaign to collect money to alleviate the plight of Afghan refugees, the Saudi Press Agency reported yesterday.
Interior Minister Prince Naif has urged all citizens and expatriates to respond actively to a royal directive to donate generously to help Afghan refugees. Cash donations can be deposited in a special account, No. 80, in all branches of the National Commercial Bank.
Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Fahd earlier this month offered $10 million in humanitarian aid to help Afghan refugees.
"The Afghan refugees have no shelter but the open sky and go days and nights without eating anything. They are in desperate need of donations to help ease their suffering," Prince Naif said in his appeal on Saturday.
The prince added that the aid would go directly to the refugees.
A Saudi relief team consisting representatives of the Saudi Red Crescent and the Ministry of Finance and National Economy has been set up to organize and expedite relief operations.
The team has already made all arrangements to airlift the relief materials to the refugee camps.
The Ministry of Finance has taken steps to the immediate dispatch of 10,000 tons of food, medicines and tent materials to the refugees while the first two Saudi transport planes carrying relief materials have already arrived in Islamabad.
Dr. Abdul Rahman Abdul Aziz Al-Suweilim, president of the Saudi Red Crescent, said an action team under the supervision of Saudi Ambassador to Pakistan Ali Al-Aseeri would supervise the distribution of the relief. The team will coordinate with the Pakistani government to facilitate this massive humanitarian scheme, Al-Suweilim said.
It will work in conjunction with Pakistan’s department for refugee affairs in Khaybar, near Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan.
Each camp will shelter more than 10,000 refugees. The team has also ordered a Pakistani factory to supply 2,000 tents, he said.
Some of the refugees are still suffering from the trauma of witnessing the bombardment. A refugee from Kabul said: "We lost everything, our house and property. We were so afraid of the attacks that we have forgotten our own names and can’t even understand what we say to each other."
Peshawar, a city in the north west of Pakistan, is teeming with millions of refugees.
Near the Afghan-Iran border a camp to house 200,000 people has been set up while the UN High Commissioner for Refugees expected an influx of between 300,000 and 400,000 refugees there.
The United Nations has appealed for hundreds of millions of dollars in aid to avoid a humanitarian catastrophe in Afghanistan.
