SAGHAR, Afghanistan, 26 February 2005 — US-led forces and international agencies stepped up aid efforts yesterday after officials said at least 580 people, many of them children, had died during Afghanistan’s bitterest winter for a decade. Three hundred people died in a single district of the badly-hit western province of Ghor, a local official told AFP after the snowbound area was reached for the first time in weeks by US military Black Hawk helicopters.
Hundreds of Afghans in a snowbound mountain town cheered from the rooftops yesterday as a US military plane airdropped emergency supplies to an area where dozens have died during the worst winter in decades. Cut off for the past month, Saghar’s beleaguered residents stared skyward as airmen aboard a C-130 aircraft pushed out parachutes laden with a total 20 tons of beans, biscuits, wheat and halal meals supplied by the World Food Program. Saghar in Ghor sits 2,240 meters (7,800 feet) up in the mountains some 160 km east of Herat, the largest city in western Afghanistan.
The US military also flew Black Hawk helicopters into Saghar carrying medics, soldiers and journalists. The choppers cannot carry as much food supplies as a C-130. Chief local government officer Ali Khan told reporters that more than 300 people had died out of Saghar district’s population of 40,000. “This is a lot more than usual,” Khan said.
The flight across the craggy mountaintops took the Black Hawks to the limit of their altitude range, underlining the risks relief workers must take to reach these stricken people in their mud-walled houses. Ghor has been one of the worst-effected provinces, and with reports still to come in from many outlying areas the death toll could be in the hundreds.
Local pharmacist Abdullah Ghasasy reckoned the severe cold, pneumonia, tuberculosis and malnutrition had so far killed 60 people, mostly children, in Saghar town and nearby villages alone. People there believe they are at least better off than those families living in even more remote hamlets of the district. But it is only a guess - there has been no communication with those isolated communities for weeks.
“Many people have died since the town was cut off. Every day three or four more, mostly children, die because there are no facilities,” said Mohammed Hashim, a resident in Saghar. “We think it’s much worse in other villages, but we don’t have communications,” Hashim said, adding, “People don’t have enough fuel, because we didn’t expect such a bad winter.”
It was the worst winter since 1981, according to Khan and he predicted another month of snow before the spring thaw brought more havoc from flooding. The military is hoping to fly in doctors from relief organizations today. Aid workers hope to be able to bring in 140 tons of additional emergency supplies once blocked roads are reopened.
US soldiers arriving in Saghar were met first by a young boy cradling a tiny boy in his arms. Small enough to be a few months old, the sickly, malnourished infant with a blotched face was actually aged three. US medic Brian Rick suspected the child had suffered brain damage either at birth or soon after, and the marks on his face resulted from an untreatable fungal infection.
Another resident, Mohammed Usman, recounted how three women had died during childbirth because no medical help could reach them. “Afghanistan is the poorest country in this region, and Ghor is the poorest province of Afghanistan,” Khan said. It is a situation that won’t change anytime soon. “Right now we need the road open, we need food and medicine and doctors,” said the government officer.
However Ghor’s deputy governor Ikramuddin Rezaie said earlier that at least 192 people in the province had died from illness, avalanches and malnutrition, 90 of whom were children.
