LONDON (AlertNet) - Aid agencies have stepped up their pleas for emergency food shipments to Afghanistan as the country's refugee crisis worsens, arguing that the people's needs outweigh the risk of indirectly helping the Taliban government or a U.S.-led war effort.

The international media have been focusing on the humanitarian crisis since the U.S. government made it clear that the Taliban would be held to account for harbouring Osama bin Laden, Washington's prime suspect in the September 11 attacks in the United States which killed thousands of people.

Before that, millions of Afghans were already at risk because of drought, displacement and years of war.

The threat of U.S.-led military action interrupted food supplies at a vital time, compelling thousands more families to flee. Oxfam said that between one million and two million people were on the road in Afghanistan, trying to reach safety.

Alex Renton, Oxfam's East Asia regional media and advocacy coordinator, said: "We see this as a crucial window, before the war or strikes, and before the winter. October is the time to stock up the larder for winter, because two-thirds of the eight million people who are dependent on food aid in normal times will be cut off from mid-November to March. And that was a normal functional requirement before this ever happened."

The U.N. World Food Programme (WFP) halted food shipments to Afghanistan after the attacks in the United States but said distribution inside the country continued.

On Monday, eight trucks arrived in Kabul carrying the first WFP shipment of food to reach the city since then. WFP spokesman Khaled Mansour said the consignment consisted of 218 tonnes of wheat.

FOOD SHIPMENTS RESUMED

"This is a positive sign and we will continue to ship more food into Afghanistan," he said. "This food will be very vital for programmes such as the bakeries in Kabul that help about 350,000 Afghans."

Mansour said food convoys were also being sent into other parts of the country.

Earlier, Mansour told AlertNet that access to people in Afghanistan had been reduced since September 11.

Renton said: "It is very frustrating. At the moment, we have willing staff who are very eager to do the job, and very little to supply them with."

He said Oxfam had shipped 1,500 tonnes of food to Afghanistan through neighbouring Turkmenistan two weeks ago and was negotiating with the WFP to take in more.

Most international relief staff withdrew from Afghanistan after the September 11 hijack attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington, but local employees continued to run programmes in spite of increasingly difficult conditions. The Taliban announced last week that using a satellite telephones or radios had become a capital offence.

Mansour said: "Almost all our offices are cut off and we have an extremely difficult time trying to get hold of them. However, we are still maintaining contact with some of our aid workers on the ground, and we are still receiving information from them about our activities in various parts of the country."

Renton said: "Many of our staff are still in Afghanistan -- 140 -- and many of the networks are still very much up and running. But things continue to deteriorate every day, not least because at the beginning of the week we had to cut off normal communication because the Taliban said that anyone using a satphone would be executed."

However, he said that in the western town of Herat, where thousands of displaced people were housed in camps, the Taliban had set up a satellite phone, which was monitored but could be used by humanitarian agencies.

Staff security and logistics are one obstacle to food shipments but the politics of food aid during conflicts is also a political minefield.

Relief agencies are sensitive to the criticism that aid can be diverted for political ends and many have invested significant time and resources in researching this field.

"The Implications of Do No Harm for Donors and Aid Agency Headquarters", published by the Massachusetts-based Collaborative for Development Action (CDA), examines the wider consequences of relief and development work.

"FOOD AID FEEDS ARMIES"

Looking at the difficult decisions faced by NGOs during conflicts, the book says: "Food aid feeds armies as well as civilians."

Marshall Wallace, project director of the CDA's Local Capacities for Peace project, said that NGOs had grappled with the issue of whether to work in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan long before the current crisis.

"The Afghan people are suffering, and there is a famine situation, and that should be mitigated if at all possible," he told AlertNet.

"If this situation probably requires an infusion of food aid, how to do that without supporting the Taliban has been the problem that we have faced over the last several years. That is one of the reasons why so many agencies have been pulling out -- because they have been unable to get the food aid to the people who need it."

The WFP's Mansour said: "One of our main operational guidelines is to do our best to avoid food falling into the wrong hands. We work with international NGOs and national NGOs, and we have our local aid workers on the ground.

"Unless we can ascertain to a reasonable extent under the circumstances that the food we are sending in will get to the people who are meant to receive it, we will not send food in. We cannot follow every bag of wheat to where it ends. This is practically impossible. We can assure to a reasonable extent that the food we are sending will get to the people who are meant to receive it."

Oxfam's Renton said: "It's a fact of life for food distribution in conflict zones that you will lose stock. It's regrettable, and our staff are very experienced in monitoring it and trying to stop it happening."

Wallace said that refugees outside Afghanistan might be further from Taliban control. However, he said: "We have seen numerous cases where refugee camps become controlled by one of the warring parties or become hotbeds for recruitment."

He added: "When you set up food distribution in a place, you begin to draw people into that area, and you can affect the movement of the refugees in that way."

Wallace said: "We have to emphasise that there are people who need the assistance. But the way in which we bring that aid in can have an impact on the conflict."

Save the Children spokesman Paul Hetherington said: "It's a learning process. Lessons have been learnt from every single crisis, and steps have been made to try to redress that each time. I think everyone accepts that there were mistakes in the past, like the Ethiopia famine.

"I think everyone realises in hindsight that there were things that were wrong there, but I think we've all taken that on board and we've learnt from the lessons.

U.S. SUPPORTS FOOD AID

Hetherington said: "We support putting food aid in there. All wars are waged against children. The people that are really suffering are the children. They're the innocent people on the ground, and we have a duty to protect them because children are the same all over the world. Therefore, we would always try to provide food aid or whatever aid was necessary."

The media in countries preparing for what U.S. President George W. Bush calls a war on terrorism has helped to focus public attention on the plight of the Afghan people.

In the view of relief professionals, governments that favour military retaliation for the September 11 attacks are anxious to show that they are also concerned about civilians in Afghanistan.

Mansour said: "United States is the largest supporter of the WFP Afghan operations. For our last operation they provided nearly 90 percent of the food and support we needed."

He said that food shipments sent and pledged by the United States before September 11 would still go ahead.

Renton said that the U.S. State Department had urged organisations to provide food aid.

However, NGOs and U.N. representatives said they were not under any pressure from governments -- who fund their operations -- to increase their humanitarian operations for Afghans.

Hetherington said: "No one is putting pressure on us to take an active role there. We will be doing so, because we've been working there for some considerable time, and we have the infrastructure and the experts in place to really deliver in that area."

Trevor Rowe of the WFP said: "It's not a question of independence, and it's not a question of pressure. It's a question of the United Nations' commitment to feeding the hungry, and the United Nations is committed to that."

Mansour said: "I would not define our position as under pressure from any government either this way or the other. We are under pressure to give to the people who need it the most."

Renton said: "I think it's fair to say that the whole community -- starting with the U.S. government, and going through every single NGO -- wants to send food aid in at the moment."