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CNN Saturday Morning News

U.S. Gets Ready to Deliver Food Into Afghanistan

Aired October 06, 2001 - 10:20   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.
KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: The U.S. is getting ready to deliver food and other humanitarian supplies to refugees inside Afghanistan. And the International Red Cross is again distributing food to displaced people in the northern part of the country. CNN's Kamal Hyder is observing the plight of the refugees in Afghanistan firsthand and he's on the phone with us.

Kamal, can you hear us OK?

KAMAL HYDER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, I can. I can hear you loud and clear.

PHILLIPS: Go ahead and tell us the mood right now and the situation that's happening at this time. Where are you and what is life like right now for the refugees at this moment?

HYDER: Well, basically, the refugees are -- I'm in eastern Afghanistan. As far as the refugees are concerned, most of those refugees are on the border of Pakistan, Afghanistan, which is about an hour-and-a-half from where I am. Here, near Jalalabad, where I'm located, it's business as usual. In fact, shops are now opening in Jalalabad and there's more people seen here.

And of course, people are tightlipped as far as their loyalty to the king or to the government that's concerned there. They're keeping quiet because of very high alert by the Taliban intelligence agencies there.

PHILLIPS: And there have been a number of reports about food and water being blocked and not getting into the areas. Can you tell us, if indeed that the amount of food and water needed is getting to them?

HYDER: Yes, in fact, on that count, Halad Monsus (ph) spoke to us today and he said that the World Food Program was carrying on with its week's supplies to Afghanistan, to Kabul and to Heart. What they did, a week ago, was to send a test drive of 200 tons to Heart and after that, they quadrupled that amount.

When the wheat arrived at the particular place, then they quadrupled the amount of wheat there. They said that they needed 3,000 trucks but they didn't have those trucks so they were renting it from local transporters. They said they had just a 100 trucks of their own. But they said that they were trying to meet the current requirements, which were low but still, you know, moving satisfactory.

Their grains supplies or grain in regions like Kandahar and all that, still within their control. So the situation, though, serious enough, is being tackled in a very professional way as we see on the ground there by the World Food Program.

PHILLIPS: Kamal, in addition to the refugees this morning, we've also been talking about that video that we've been running all morning. I don't know if we have that and can bring that up so our viewers who may not have seen it yet this morning can take a look at this. But what else can you tell us about the anti-aircraft guns or some say it was a SAM, a surface-to-air missile that fired at a U.S. aircraft, believed to be a U.S. aircraft.

Here is the video right now. We're looking at it this morning. What more can you tell us about that?

HYDER: Well, the people of Kabul now understand fully well that it was an intelligence aircraft. I mean for intelligence gathering for reconnaissance purposes because you must remember that a week ago, the Taliban were able to shoot down a drone in the northern area as well where the Taliban and the Northern Alliance are pitted against each other.

Taliban sources were saying that the reconnaissance mission there was to try and see Taliban positions, frontline positions. So they knew later on, I mean after firing at this aircraft, they found out that it was a drone indeed. And they used anti-aircraft artillery plus eyewitness accounts of at least one missile being fired at this target, which apparently missed the target. But the Taliban authorities on the other hand, were saying that there were no missiles fired and they tried to bring this drone down with their anti-aircraft artillery, which of course, failed.

PHILLIPS: And once again, we do want to emphasize the point you did make, Kamal, and that was that the aircraft was not hit.

All right, our Kamal Hyder observing the plight of the refugees in addition to following the anti-aircraft guns firing at the aircraft earlier today. Thank you very much.

We want to move on now to CNN's Chris Burns. He's witnessing the struggle for survival at some northern Afghanistan refugee camps. He reports on a nightmare of hunger, weather and disease getting worse with each passing day.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CHRIS BURNS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): On a barren slope in the Panjshir Valley, a tent city grows by the day. Part of Northern Alliance held territory, Camp Anaba (ph), takes in mainly refugees from Taliban held Kabul. The Alliance says as many as 500 people a day flee north from the capital and they expect that number to skyrocket if the U.S. attacks the Taliban.

Some refugees stay with relatives but an increasing number have no choice but sparsely equipped camps like this one.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We don't have clothes. We don't have foods. We don't have stoves. We don't have lights and chairs and blankets.

BURNS: Sultan Mohammed (ph) is a 35-year-old bizarre merchant who fled Kabul four days earlier. He came with his wife, eight children and his 85-year-old father. They sleep in a small burrow tent, hoping for a larger shelter and hoping for U.S. air strikes to topple the Taliban regime.

"Of course, we want that," he says, "The Taliban burned our home to the ground. We are ready to die from hunger, but we are not ready die under Taliban rule."

If hunger doesn't kill here, the weather or disease could in a camp lacking shelter.

(on-camera): Camp Anaba (ph) has more than 6,000 people; more than one-third of them have arrived since the terror attacks on the United States. And with winter, barely one month away, fears are growing over how these refugees will survive.

(voice-over): Officials say hundreds more tents are needed to accommodate new families and to replace aging and tattered shelters.

In another camp down the road, it's time for prayer as night falls and time for dinner as it were, bread dipped in water. It could get far worse. U.N. officials say already 400,000 people in remote areas of the north could face starvation in a week and that's before winter begins to take its toll.

Chris Burns, CNN, in Northern Afghanistan.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

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