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American Morning

Race Against Time: Interview of Chip Lyons, U.S. Fund for UNICEF President, on Humanitarian Relief for Afghan Children

Aired November 06, 2001 - 09:52   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Let's go back to the war zone and the plight of Afghan refugees. Of all the enemies facing them, winter may be the toughest.

Chip Lyons is president of the U.S. Fund for UNICEF, the United Nations Children's Fund. He just returned from Afghanistan's northern border, where UNICEF is conducting a winter survival operation.

Chip, good to have you with us.

CHIP LYONS, PRESIDENT, U.S. FUND FOR UNICEF: Good to be here.

O'BRIEN: What led you to the location. What did you need to see, and what did you come away with?

LYONS: It's a refugee population in this area between the Tajik and Afghan border, between 12,000, maybe 15,000 people. I was a part of a supply convoy that got in there to provide for the basic health needs of the children among the refugees, as well as give them some winter supplies.

O'BRIEN: We're on the map here. This is the Panj River. What we're talking about is an island, although, based on our discussion a moment ago, because of a drought situation, it's not what you might imagine, an island in the middle of the river. But this has become a bit of a no-man's-land. Give us a sense of the plight of these people and the sense to which they've been abandoned?

LYONS: They're out on this river plane. It was hot as could be. This is now 10 days ago. And dusty -- very little water, because of the drought conditions. So they're having to dig in the soil to find some sort of water table. Inadequate food supplies. They're stuck, if you will, between the Tajik border, where there's a set of cliffs that provides a natural border that's guarded very carefully, and then there's river Panj, which is now so low that there's no discernible island; rather, it's a floodplain. So there's ample room for the refugees, but there's no real place to go. They've made some basic houses for themselves. On the other side of the river, only probably 3 kilometers away, are the Taliban positions.

So they're really stuck there. And on that day, it was a rare great day for these kids. We immunized 346 kids, gave them winter coats and jackets, and measured their feet for boots that we will buy locally to give them on a future visit.

You did take some pictures. Hopefully, we can see some of those as we are talking here.

I'm just curious. Give us a sense of the biggest challenge in delivering food and medicine to a group that is as isolated as this and trapped in a war zone?

LYONS: Overall, we need three things: We need more resources to pull it off; we need access to population groups like this outside, but particularly within, Afghanistan; and we need the latest-breaking winter on record in Afghanistan, because once that snow comes, we're not going to be able to get in. It's not -- forgive the obvious statement -- as if anyone is plowing roads; once the snow comes, we're cut off.

O'BRIEN: As we look at these pictures, give us a sense of -- these are some of the inoculations that you were involved in -- the general health of the children there. How many were in real peril?

LYONS: Most of them, in many respects. We started the day in real peril in two respects: Most of these kids are malnourished, some severely. You see signs of scurvy. You see sores on their faces. You see thin hair, which is a sign of malnutrition. You probably also saw that most of them have thin cotton clothes; many of them didn't have shoes.

Their health is a first priority, but then we had to give them some basic supplies for winter. It's a little bit as if you and I were preparing to camp out until April. So we're trying to gather what we need now for four months with a brutal winter coming, of Minnesota-like proportions, if I may say.

And those are twin threats to these kids. So we immunized them against several things: measles, polio, tetanus. But we were also able to give them a vitamin A supplement, which strengthens them a little bit against some of the disease they face.

O'BRIEN: I imagine there are a lot of people watching, wondering what they can do. Is this an issue of sending some money in, or is this just simply a logistical challenge that no one here can really handle?

LYONS: It's not just logistics, but money without logistics is not going to allow us to get to as many kids as we need to. But logistics alone isn't going to do it either. So we urge people to provide whatever financial support they can while we continue to bang away both on more access and, where we have access -- this scene you saw here is repeated day after day after day. That day was 346 kids; the following day was several hundred more kids. We'll just keep going and going and going.

O'BRIEN: Chip Lyons, who is the president of the U.S. Fund for UNICEF, thanks for telling about what had to be a very grueling journey.

LYONS: Thanks for your interest. It's a big help.

O'BRIEN: Thank you very much.

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