Taliban Taxes UN Food Aid Convoy

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By T.C. Malhotra
CNSNews.com Correspondent
October 12, 2001


New Delhi (CNSNews.com) - In what could be seen as a sign of increasing desperation, Afghanistan's ruling Taliban is now taxing United Nations food aid arriving in the country from neighboring Iran and Pakistan.

According to the UN World Food Program, the Taliban stopped a UN food aid convoy on its way from Quetta to Herat on Thursday, charging $32 on each 475 tons of food.

"We are unable to pay such heavy taxes," said WFP spokesman Francesco Luna said in Islamabad. "They are unprecedented."

Luna said U.N. officials are discussing the issue with Taliban authorities, and that even under the current "taxing" circumstances, the WFP will continue food shipments into the starving country.

"We have no choice," Luna was quoted as saying. "Millions of people in Afghanistan rely on us for food. We are in race against time," he said, adding that winter is approaching, making the crisis all the more severe.

Since September 25, the WFP has shipped 14,814 metric tons of food into Afghanistan.

The WFP representative in Iran, Marius Degaay Fortman, was quoted by a French news agency as saying that a WFP convoy of trucks from Iran loaded with 100 tons of wheat flour from the United States was taxed before arriving in Herat.

Degaay Fortman said the convoys would continue despite the taxes, with a shipment of fruit to follow on Sunday.