[Afghanistan] poverty fuels Taliban support - report

from Reuters Alert Net

By Deborah Haynes

LONDON, Sept 5 (Reuters) - Thousands of people are starving in makeshift camps in southern Afghanistan, where poverty is fuelling support for the Taliban against NATO-led troops in the country, a think-tank said on Tuesday.

Clashes between Taliban and international forces, coupled with insufficient aid, have driven people into unregistered refugee camps that have sprung up near water sources in Kandahar and Helmand provinces, the Senlis Council said in a report.

The report, to mark five years since the Sept. 11 attacks that triggered the U.S.-led invasion to topple Afghanistan's hardline Taliban, said the crisis was aggravated by a tendency for more money to go into military operations than development.

"Afghans are starving to death, and there is evidence that poverty is driving support for the Taliban," the report said.

"Insurgency is present in (the southern) half of the country: the Taliban are back and advancing rapidly towards Kabul," said Senlis, an independent policy think-tank with offices in London, Paris, Brussels and Kabul.

Britain's Foreign Office disputed the claims, saying progress was being made across the whole of Afghanistan, including the restive southern province of Helmand where 4,000 British troops are based.

"We do not recognise the picture they are painting," said a Foreign Office spokesman, stressing that real advances had been made in Afghanistan, including the creation of a democratic government, a constitution and economic growth.

"It will take time," he said, adding Britain knew that Helmand province would be difficult when it agreed to take control of security in the region earlier this year.

Emmanuel Reinert, executive director of the Senlis Council, said 50 researchers had found 10 to 15 camps in Helmand and Kandahar, with one containing 10,000 people.

Fighting across Afghanistan is the worst since U.S.-led forces ousted the Taliban in late 2001, with more than 2,000 people, most of them militants, along with civilians, aid workers and hundreds of Afghan security personnel, have been killed this year. More than 115 foreign troops have died.

Other factors pushing people into camps included a bad harvest and the eradication of poppy crops -- an illicit trade that is outlawed under the new Afghan government but which many farmers still rely on for their livelihood, the think-tank said.