Afghanistan timeline April 2001

April 19, 2002

• In an effort to find out how western aid was being used, three U.S. officials completed a rare visit to Afghanistan.

April 18, 2002

• The European Union announced that it had signed a contract with the World Food Program to contribute humanitarian aid worth US $900,000 to Afghanistan.
• A special delegation of experts commissioned by the U.N. was in Pakistan to examine the enforcement of U.N. sanctions and an arms embargo against Afghanistan's ruling Taliban. The delegation occurred because of allegations by the Northern Alliance that Pakistan was defying the sanctions, something Islamabad vehemently denied.

April 17, 2002

• The second of five rounds of polio immunizations[?] of 2001 began after the Taliban Islamic Movement and the Northern Alliance agreed to a week-long ceasefire. The ceasefire enabled tens of thousands of staff and volunteers to operate freely to carry out a house-to-house effort to immunize all children under five years of age.

April 16, 2002

• The body of Mullah Mohammad Rabbani was repatriated to Kandahar, Afghanistan by a U.N. plane, permitted to operate on humanitarian grounds despite the air embargo. Rabbani had died in Pakistan a week earlier of liver cancer.
• General Abdul Rashid Dostum met with his former enemy, the senior commander of anti-Taliban forces, Ahmad Shah Masud[?], to discuss plans for a new northern front. Morale among opposition forces was reported to have been boosted by the return of General Dostum from exile. Prior to this, the two commanders were bitter enemies in Mujahidin[?] inter-factional fighting. The meeting was reported to have taken place in the Panjshir[?] valley in the province of Badakhshan[?], the only part of Afghanistan under full opposition control.