IRIN
AFGHANISTAN: Food insecurity prompts hundreds to leave their homes
29 April 2008


KABUL, 29 April 2008 (IRIN) - Hundreds of people have abandoned their 
homes and moved to urban areas in different parts of Afghanistan, and 
some have reportedly migrated to neighbouring Pakistan, due to worsening 
food insecurity, largely resulting from soaring food prices and low 
cereal supplies, provincial officials said.

At least 1,000 food-insecure people have left their homes in several 
parts of the northeastern province of Badakhshan over the past month, 
Nasir Hemat, the provincial head of the Afghan Red Crescent Society 
(ARCS), told IRIN.

"People have moved to other provinces and some have gone to neighbouring 
countries," said Hemat, adding that in various parts of the province 
some people were eating grass due to lack of food.

Hundreds of locals have also been displaced in Alburz and other 
districts in the northern province of Balkh, local Kabul-based media 
said, quoting several residents and one provincial official.

Food-insecurity-related displacements have also been reported in 
southern Kandahar, Zabul and Helmand provinces where a "spreading armed 
conflict" [http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=77668] has 
affected civilians and has impeded humanitarian and development access.

"We have received unverified reports that people have been displaced due 
to food-insecurity in Arghistan and Marof districts of Kandahar, and 
also in different parts of Helmand and Zabul provinces, and that some 
families have migrated to Quetta [in Pakistan]," Najibullah Barith, 
president of the ARCS in Kandahar Province, told IRIN from Kandahar.

Vulnerable

Prices of food - critically wheat flour - have increased by over 100 
percent in Afghanistan over the past year, according to the Ministry of 
Agriculture, Irrigation and Livestock.

While millions of vulnerable Afghans have already been exposed to "high 
risk" food-insecurity 
[http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=76400], there are mounting 
concerns that price hikes could be compounded by drought and low cereal 
production in 2008. All this will adversely affect vulnerable 
communities.

"Below-average levels of rain and snow during the 2007-08 wet season, 
high food prices, and low regional cereal supplies are likely to lead to 
increased levels of food insecurity for small-scale farmers, rain-fed 
agriculturalists, pastoralists and poor households in urban areas," said 
a report by Famine Early Warning Systems (FEWS) 
[http://www.fews.net/docs/Publications/Afghanistan_alert_2008_04_24_final.pdf] 
of the US Agency for International Development (USAID) released on 24 
April.

Aid agencies have warned that vulnerable Afghan households may not be 
able to cope with worsening food-insecurity, and "additional shocks" 
will probably lead to mass displacement and starvation.

Immediate remedies

In an effort to control soaring food prices and mitigate their impact on 
destitute Afghans the government has earmarked US$50 million to buy and 
import food items from regional markets, a spokesman for President Hamid 
Karzai said in Kabul on 22 April.

Afghan food markets are affected by a strict ban imposed by the 
Pakistani government on wheat flour exports. Pakistani officials say 
their country is also affected by increasing global food prices.

Given Afghanistan's weak coping and response capacity, millions of its 
food-insecure and highly vulnerable citizens are increasingly becoming a 
heavy burden for the UN World Food Programme (WFP), which already feeds 
over five million Afghans.

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