The Tzu Chi international relief mission has now extended to Afghanistan. On May 28, 1998, a relief team delivered 650 kilograms of medicine to Bamiyan Province in central Afghanistan, just two days before the second severe earthquake in three months rocked the northeast part of the country. It was the third medical supply that victims of war and famine had received from humanitarian organizations in fifteen years.

The team included four Tzu Chi members--Stephen Huang, Hsieh Ching-kuei, Wang Chih-hung and Yang Ming-che--and two members from Knightsbridge International--Dr. Edward Artis and Dr. James Laws. The medical supplies were distributed to doctors at the local health center and two other clinics. It was estimated that the supplies could be used to treat up to 10,000 people.

For years, the people of Bamiyan Province have endured a long famine and disruptions caused by fighting between fundamentalist Muslim Taliban forces and the anti-Taliban alliance. Bamiyan Province, with a population of 400,000, is the home of the Hazara people, descendants of Mongolian troops of Genghis Khan, who overran this part of the world in the twelfth century. As a minority race (nineteen percent of the population), they are looked down upon and discriminated against by other Afghans, who are mostly of Persian and Turkic stock. After the USSR withdrew its troops in 1989, the country sank into civil war.

Mountains cover ninety percent of the province, and the cold winter lasts for six months with temperatures of three to ten degrees below zero. Transportation is mainly provided by donkeys. The main crops are wheat, barley, mushung and baquli, which are grown in the spring. When crops were affected by unusually harsh weather, the people usually led their livestock down to Ghazni and Maidan Provinces to exchange for food.

However, since September of last year, Bamiyan has been entirely isolated by a blockade imposed by the Taliban, who now control some eighty-five percent of the country. Last year, cold weather and snow came much earlier than usual and destroyed a large part of their agricultural crops. Moreover, plant diseases and an infestation of rats worsened the situation. Bamiyan people now have no way to get out of the province, and relief material is not permitted to go in. The people have already eaten all the seeds which were to be planted this autumn.

With natural disasters and endless fighting, more and more people, especially women and children, have suffered from starvation. According to an April 1998 report by the World Food Program, seventy percent of the population had nothing to eat. The rest of the people had only some potatoes, enough to last from ten days to one month.

The report also showed that a large number of the children and elderly were malnourished. Children had grown abnormally. Ten- or eleven-year-old children looked to be only six to seven years old. The children were weak and their heads and abdomens were swollen. Their faces showed no laughter or liveliness.

The WFP observed the case of Naz Bibi. Her husband died in the war two years ago, leaving her to look after six children. In the early winter of last year, she sold her sheep and household possessions for food. The food was finished by midwinter, and she started begging for food. In order to feed her children, she herself ate very little. At last, she died of starvation.

One case was also reported in which a father sold his newborn daughter for twenty-five sers [385 lb] of barley.

Actually, non-governmental organizations connected with the United Nations have tried to deliver emergency aid many times. They could not reach the famine areas due to severed roads and the high risks caused by fighting.

In February 1998, Master Cheng Yen learned through the Internet that widespread famine and a severe earthquake had devastated Afghanistan. She was deeply concerned for the victims of the disasters and looked for any connection through which she could deliver help. In mid-March, Professor Tseng Ying-lung of the Tzu Chi College of Medicine contacted California congressman Dana Rohrabacher, who then referred US Tzu Chi members to Dr. Artis of Knightsbridge International. Artis was just preparing to deliver medicines and emergency food supplies from various charity organizations, and he was glad to be able load more supplies and love to help suffering women and children in Afghanistan. Within thirty minutes after a phone conversation with Dr. Artis, Tzu Chi members in Los Angeles had Master Cheng Yen's permission to wire a sum of money to MedPharm in Amsterdam to pay for medical supplies. In twenty-four hours, twelve kinds of antibiotics and 5,000 IV bottles were flown directly from MedPharm to Tashkent, Uzbekistan, arriving there the day before a relief team led by Dr. Artis arrived.

Dr. Artis and Dr. Laws personally delivered the medicines to the doctor at the village drugstore, which did not have a single tablet of medicine in it. All the lifesaving supplies were given to the villagers, who had shoveled snow by hand for five days to clear roads for their arrival.

In May, Tzu Chi members again cooperated with Knightsbridge International in delivering US$300,000 worth of medical supplies to Bamiyan City. For the city's population of nearly 30,000, there are only fifteen clinics with simple facilities, adequate only for small operations like appendectomies. The relief team visited a clinic which had been established by a Belgian missionary. The workers had all stopped coming due to the fighting, and only a local female doctor and her husband insisted on staying to help the townspeople, even though they had not been paid in six months.

After the distribution of the medical supplies, the team made a closer investigation of the educational and living conditions in the area. At Bamiyan University, some three hundred students studied in rough classrooms built of mud and straw. They never complained about the lack of facilities, electricity or running water, but they felt helpless about the fighting and famine in the country. Asked what they wanted most, they replied, "If only we could have some pencils and paper so that we could study."

Bamiyan City is located about 240 kilometers [150 mi] northwest of Kabul. Most people live down the valley, at an altitude of about 2,800 meters [9240 ft]. The valley is cradled between parallel mountain ranges--the Hindu Kush and the Koh-i-Baba.

On the face of a mountain near the city, three colossal statues were carved 4000 feet apart. One of them towers fifty-three meters [175 ft] high, the world's tallest standing statue of Buddha. The ancient statue was carved during the Kushan period in the fifth century. After the fall of the Kanishka kingdom, the face and legs were mutilated by invaders.

At one time, two thousand monks prayed in caves in the sandstone cliffs. The caves were also a big tourist attraction before the long series of wars in Afghanistan. Now the unheated, doorless caves shelter more than one thousand refugees. Because of the fighting, five million people have fled the country and nearly three million have become homeless.