NP? starvation in Afghanistan

[Tiarnán Ó Corráin]

On Friday 09 November 2001 21:05, Michael Baum wrote:
> DM> Many observers have also noted a major flaw in the U.S. strategy of
> DM> dropping those food packets along with the bombs -- it leads to the
> DM> distrust of all forms of humanitarian aid coming in.  That's one big
> reason DM> why so many aid officials have been arguing against this
> practice.
>
> Specifically, how many observers note that? And how much data do they
> have?

Christian Aid, Oxfam, Médecins sans Frontières, and the UN World Food 
Programme, to name a few. Their knowledge is based on the work they have done 
with Afghan refugees and inside Afghanistan itself.

> Again, _how_ many aid officials, exactly. Is there audio or video
> tape? I'd like to see an aid official saying "Things are terrible,
> winter is coming, vast numbers of people are going to starve, and oh
> my god whatever you do don't drop food on them."

There's plenty of footage from the early days of the war: interviews with NGO 
reps in Pakistan and so forth. A selection of references:

http://www.fish.co.uk/world/emergncy/afghanistan/update1010.html
http://society.guardian.co.uk/disasterresponse/story/0,1321,565313,00.html
http://www.msf.org/countries/page.cfm?articleid=6A534F6C-233B-46AE-83BBEF2580A86AD4

A few minutes with a search engine will turn up many more references.

> maab

-- 
Tiarnán Ó Corráin       <ocorrain at esatclear.ie/ocorrain at yahoo.com> 
Alliance: In international politics, the union of two thieves who have
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separately plunder a third.
				-- Ambrose Bierce