Fact Sheet: Humanitarian Aid to the Afghan People

This fact sheet summarizes the efforts as of October 9, 2001 to provide relief assistance to the Afghan people while the United States and its allies conduct military operations against terrorist organizations in Afghanistan.

Humanitarian Aid to Afghans Will Continue

• As the United States and its allies are conducting military strikes against terrorist organizations in Afghanistan, the United States is continuing its humanitarian assistance to the Afghan people.

• Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has emphasized that humanitarian aid would continue, even as the U.S. takes military action to uproot the terrorists in Afghanistan. Military action, he said, was intended "to create conditions for sustained anti-terrorist and humanitarian operations in Afghanistan."

• During the military strikes, the United States has been dropping interim food relief, in the form of humanitarian daily rations (HDR) packets. 37,500 were dropped on October 7, and another 37,500 on October 8. The HDR packets are an interim measure, until adequate humanitarian relief can be delivered. As Counselor to the President Karen Hughes said in a news conference on October 8, "we are going to be clearing the way so we can deliver humanitarian relief."

• A convoy of World Food Program trucks carrying 100 tons of wheat has left Iran, heading for Herat, in western Afghanistan. According to State Department spokesman Richard Boucher, two other larger truck convoys, carrying wheat, have arrived in northwestern Afghanistan and in Kabul. These trucks had left on Sunday, October 8, from Pakistan and Turkmenistan. The United States is also sending 165,000 tons of food aid to Afghanistan by ship.

US Humanitarian Aid to the Afghan People

• The United States has been the single largest donor of humanitarian aid for Afghans for the past several years. In 2000, the U.S. contributed a total of $113 million in humanitarian aid to Afghans, both inside Afghanistan, and in refugee camps in neighboring countries. In 2001, that humanitarian assistance has already topped $184 million.

• On October 4, President Bush announced a new contribution of $320 million in humanitarian assistance to Afghans. This assistance includes food, medicine, blankets and shelter.

• This assistance is not given to the Taliban or any other faction, but is distributed through the United Nations, and non-government organizations. The assistance is distributed in Taliban-controlled and opposition-controlled areas of the country, wherever the need is greatest. As President Bush has said, the Afghan people are not our enemy. Terrorists are our enemy, and the Afghan people have suffered greatly because of the terrorists in their midst.

Humanitarian Aid and the Campaign Against Terrorism

• Just as Americans and citizens of 80 other countries were among the 6,000 victims of the September 11 terrorist attacks in the U.S., the Afghan people have been the victims of al-Qaida and the Taliban.

• Millions of Afghans are facing imminent starvation due to four years of extreme drought, to continuing conflict, and to Taliban misrule.

• The U.S. and its allies are working to create conditions on the ground to make it possible to deliver emergency humanitarian assistance to the Afghan people.