The Next Battle.(Afghanistan)(Brief Article)

In the cities and towns of war-torn Afghanistan, the lightning collapse of Taliban control has felt to many like liberation. Men have cut off their long beards, children have flown kites, women have listened to musty old film songs. The country would appear to have been reborn overnight, its most urgent problem solved. Yet for hundreds of thousands of Afghans, trapped in isolated mountain villages battered by years of drought and war, suffering will not be dispelled so easily.

In fact, the rapid advance of anti-Taliban forces has in many ways complicated the task of getting aid to those Afghans most in danger of starving. Relief workers face many of the same obstacles they did when the Taliban dominated the country--winter being the most pressing. In the so-called hunger belt running across the highlands of seven northern provinces, the survival of up to 3 million people depends on the arrival of food shipments before mid-December; some 700,000 of those are already malnourished and living in mountainous areas that could become inaccessible any day. Camps along the borders of Iran, Tajikistan and Pakistan continue to be flooded with refugees flee-ing the fighting. At the same time, the chaos and confusion created by the stunning military turnaround have stalled efforts to rush food aid into the most affected areas. "It's a very messy transition," says Khaled Mansour, the World Food Program spokesman in Islamabad. "Things are very dicey up there."

Despite the Taliban's apparent willing-ness to retreat without much of a fight from many areas, scattered resistance continues to hold up relief efforts. In the key northern city of Mazar-e Sharif--the first domino to fall and a critical hub for aid shipments throughout northern Afghanistan--the United Nations reported continued gun battles between Taliban and Northern Alliance fighters, and even between alliance factions themselves last week. Unidentified gunmen looted 90 tons of food from a WFP warehouse in the city and stole several vehicles. The offices of several NGOs were ransacked: the WFP lost all of its comput- er and communications equipment, while looters even ripped out the window frames from the offices of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. In the capital of Kabul, a UNHCR warehouse was emptied of 1,400 tents and other aid supplies.

Farther south in Pakistan, where many aid organizations relocated after the September 11 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, truckdrivers have refused to cross into Afghanistan until the situa- tion stabilizes. More than 60 WFP trucks sit idle at the Khyber Pass as drivers wait for security guarantees. Northern Alliance leaders, says Mansour, "are making all the right noises," promising to safeguard aid shipments in territory they control. But earlier in the week a 10-truck convoy carrying supplies for UNICEF simply disappeared in alliance-held territory in the north. Two trucks and six Afghan employees remain missing; the two truckdrivers are feared dead. (In the south, where in many cases Pashtun warlords have taken over from Taliban authorities, the situation remains even more uncertain.) Roads ...