Has the US decided to starve the Afghans into submission?

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With all due respect to the US government, it is hard for me to believe that they do not know the consequences of the bombing campaign for the orindary people of Afghanistan that are so clearly outlined in this article

Methinks a decision has been made at the highest levels of the US government that millions of people in Afghanistan must starve to death this winter, as part of our campaign to defeat the Taliban. After all, they have warned us that we must do grim things. I guess this is one of them.

Considering that the US government has deliberately targeted the children of Iraq for death as a way of getting even with Saddam Hussein, I guess we shouldn't be surprised at their callousness and inhumanity. But the hypocrisy of claiming that we are trying to help the people of Afghanistan, while providing a pittance of unsuitable assistance and meanwhile effectively closing down the real food aid programs that were on-going, is so immense that it fills me with sorrow and dread.

Do the math for yourself if you don't believe me. The figures you need are in the article.

Robert Waldrop, OKC

Into the Morass:There is no clear way to end this war By George Monbiot. Published in the Guardian 9th October 2001

Two weeks ago, the US Under Secretary of Defense, Paul Wolfowitz, compared Afghanistan to a swamp, which must be drained to catch the snakes which hide there. His analogy may be rather more apt than he intended. Swamps, as everyone knows, are harder to get out of than they are to get into.

On Sunday night, the West took its first, irreversible step into the morass. It may well prove to be the only simple one on an ever more uncertain journey. But there is now no going back. Once you have initiated military action, you are committed to it, and all further adventures in Afghanistan need be armed. It is not clear that either the British or the US governments fully understand the implications.

Yesterday morning, some fifteen hours after the airstrikes began, the United Nations announced that it had halted convoys of food to Afghanistan. From now on, and for as long as the conflict lasts, the humanitarian aid which both Blair and Bush promised would be an integral component of this campaign must be delivered primarily with the help of the armed forces. They don't seem to have any idea what this responsibility entails.

The military answer to the country's crisis so far has taken the form of 37,500 yellow ration packs, dropped from transport planes into regions in which hungry people are believed to live. Each of them contains around 2,200 calories: roughly enough to sustain one person for one day.

If you believe, as some commentators do, that this is an impressive or even meaningful operation, I urge you to conduct a simple calculation. The United Nations estimates that there are 7.5 million hungry people in Afghanistan. If every ration pack reached a starving person, then one two hundredth of the vulnerable were fed by the humanitarian effort on Sunday. The US Department of Defense has announced that it possesses a further two million of these packs, which it might be prepared to drop. If so, they could feed 27 per cent of the starving for one day.

Four weeks remain before winter envelops Afghanistan, during which enough food must be delivered to last until March. Yet the US is prepared to drop, at its own best estimate, barely one quarter of one day's needs.

Some of these rations will, of course, be lost. Many, perhaps most, will be eaten by people who are not in immediate danger of starvation, as they are more mobile than the seriously hungry and better able to reach the packs. Some will remain untouched. One of the warring factions may discover that an effective means of eliminating its enemies is to remove the contents of these packs and replace them with explosives. This is just one of the problems associated with dispensing kindness at 20,000 feet: no one can be completely sure whose generosity they are about to enjoy.

The usefulness of any feeding programme, moreover, is greatly diminished if it is not carefully targetted. People in different stages of starvation require different preparations. Children, especially infants, are more vulnerable than any others. Yet all the packs being dropped on Afghanistan are identical, and all are equipped only to feed adults. The packs contain medicine as well as food, but unlike aid workers on the ground, the pilots delivering them can offer no diagnosis. This blanket prescription is likely to be either useless or dangerous.

So western governments have terminated what may have been an effective humanitarian programme, and replaced it with a futile gesture. The bombing raids, moreover, have persuaded thousands to flee from their homes. Yet Afghanistan's borders remain closed, while the camps the UN is building in Pakistan will not be ready for another two weeks. The refugees have nowhere to go. The military strikes, the US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld announced, would "create conditions for sustained ... humanitarian relief operations in Afghanistan". They have, so far, done precisely the opposite.

But the purpose of the food drops is not to feed the starving, but to tell them they are being fed. President Bush explained on Sunday that by means of these packages, "the oppressed people of Afghanistan will know the generosity of America and our allies". They will know it, for they know that gestures will not feed them. Hunger brooks no tokenism. It demands food, not a semblance of food.

This show of generosity is, of course, designed to impress us as well as them. The yellow packages drifting onto the minefields of the Hindu Kush are likely to be the most, over the next few days, that we will see of the humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan. The hungry will die quietly, on the forgotten trails through the mountains, huddled behind rocks, searching the streets of deserted cities, clawing for roots in the empty fields. The satellites which can count the shells stacked behind a howitzer cannot peer into the faces of the starving.

And if, somehow, a sensible humanitarian mission resumed, the linkage established by both Bush and Blair between aid and ordnance, which sounds so bold and compassionate at home, could turn out to be disastrous in Afghanistan. If the humanitarian programme continues to be perceived as part of the military offensive, we could expect the dispersed guerillas of a partly vanquished regime to slip into the feeding centres, to lob a few grenades into the crowd.

While it is not hard to predict how the humanitarian operation might end, it is rather more difficult to see how the military mission could be concluded. The Taliban have vowed to fight "to the last breath". While many of their conscripts will desert, the hardcore are likely to do just this. They dispersed sometime before Sunday's attacks. Their anti-aircraft guns, tanks and planes were peripheral to the operation of what has always, in effect, been a guerilla force. In confronting them, as Russian veterans have warned, we will be pummelling thin air. Donald Rumsfeld has defined "victory" as the Taliban's "collapse from within". But this is not victory, only the beginning of the next phase of war.

If, as Bush and Blair maintain, they aim to leave Afghanistan better than it was when they found it, then the West is committed to defend it against all oppressors, whoever they might be. This implies that if the Northern Alliance moves into the vaccuum left by the nominal defeat of the Taliban, and establishes not the "broad-based" government of assorted extremists the West envisages, but a narrow government of homogenous extremists, we must fight them too.

So at what point do we stop fighting? At what point does withdrawal become either honourable or responsible? Having once engaged its forces, are we then obliged to reduce Afghanistan to a permanent protectorate? Or will we jettison responsibility as soon as military power becomes impossible to sustain?

The consequences of this endless war may be dangerous for the West. They could be deadly for Afghanistan.

9th October 2001

-- robert waldrop (rmwj@soonernet.com), October 09, 2001

Answers

"Considering that the US government has deliberately targeted the children of Iraq for death as a way of getting even with Saddam Hussein, I guess we shouldn't be surprised at their callousness and inhumanity." OH PULEASE!! What was the oil for food program? It has been documented that the Iraqi government has tried to import things that contribute nothing to the stomachs of the average Iraqi. Saddam is starving the children to make us look bad and give the people a reason to be angry, bitter and ready for a fight.

-- Steve Mcclendon (ke6bjd@yahoo.com), October 09, 2001.

http://www.progressive.org/0801issue/nagy0901.html

The Secret Behind the Sanctions How the U.S. Intentionally Destroyed Iraq's Water Supply

by Thomas J. Nagy

Over the last two years, I've discovered documents of the Defense Intelligence Agency proving beyond a doubt that, contrary to the Geneva Convention, the U.S. government intentionally used sanctions against Iraq to degrade the country's water supply after the Gulf War. The United States knew the cost that civilian Iraqis, mostly children, would pay, and it went ahead anyway.

The primary document, "Iraq Water Treatment Vulnerabilities," is dated January 22, 1991. It spells out how sanctions will prevent Iraq from supplying clean water to its citizens.

"Iraq depends on importing specialized equipment and some chemicals to purify its water supply, most of which is heavily mineralized and frequently brackish to saline," the document states. "With no domestic sources of both water treatment replacement parts and some essential chemicals, Iraq will continue attempts to circumvent United Nations Sanctions to import these vital commodities. Failing to secure supplies will result in a shortage of pure drinking water for much of the population. This could lead to increased incidences, if not epidemics, of disease."

The document goes into great technical detail about the sources and quality of Iraq's water supply. The quality of untreated water "generally is poor," and drinking such water "could result in diarrhea," the document says. It notes that Iraq's rivers "contain biological materials, pollutants, and are laden with bacteria. Unless the water is purified with chlorine, epidemics of such diseases as cholera, hepatitis, and typhoid could occur."

The document notes that the importation of chlorine "has been embargoed" by sanctions. "Recent reports indicate the chlorine supply is critically low."

Food and medicine will also be affected, the document states. "Food processing, electronic, and, particularly, pharmaceutical plants require extremely pure water that is free from biological contaminants," it says.

The document addresses possible Iraqi countermeasures to obtain drinkable water despite sanctions.

"Iraq conceivably could truck water from the mountain reservoirs to urban areas. But the capability to gain significant quantities is extremely limited," the document states. "The amount of pipe on hand and the lack of pumping stations would limit laying pipelines to these reservoirs. Moreover, without chlorine purification, the water still would contain biological pollutants. Some affluent Iraqis could obtain their own minimally adequate supply of good quality water from Northern Iraqi sources. If boiled, the water could be safely consumed. Poorer Iraqis and industries requiring large quantities of pure water would not be able to meet their needs."

The document also discounted the possibility of Iraqis using rainwater. "Precipitation occurs in Iraq during the winter and spring, but it falls primarily in the northern mountains," it says. "Sporadic rains, sometimes heavy, fall over the lower plains. But Iraq could not rely on rain to provide adequate pure water."

As an alternative, "Iraq could try convincing the United Nations or individual countries to exempt water treatment supplies from sanctions for humanitarian reasons," the document says. "It probably also is attempting to purchase supplies by using some sympathetic countries as fronts. If such attempts fail, Iraqi alternatives are not adequate for their national requirements."

In cold language, the document spells out what is in store: "Iraq will suffer increasing shortages of purified water because of the lack of required chemicals and desalination membranes. Incidences of disease, including possible epidemics, will become probable unless the population were careful to boil water."

The document gives a timetable for the destruction of Iraq's water supplies. "Iraq's overall water treatment capability will suffer a slow decline, rather than a precipitous halt," it says. "Although Iraq is already experiencing a loss of water treatment capability, it probably will take at least six months (to June 1991) before the system is fully degraded."

This document, which was partially declassified but unpublicized in 1995, can be found on the Pentagon's web site at www.gulflink.osd.mil. (I disclosed this document last fall. But the news media showed little interest in it. The only reporters I know of who wrote lengthy stories on it were Felicity Arbuthnot in the Sunday Herald of Scotland, who broke the story, and Charlie Reese of the Orlando Sentinel, who did a follow-up.)

Recently, I have come across other DIA documents that confirm the Pentagon's monitoring of the degradation of Iraq's water supply. These documents have not been publicized until now.

The first one in this batch is called "Disease Information," and is also dated January 22, 1991. At the top, it says, "Subject: Effects of Bombing on Disease Occurrence in Baghdad." The analysis is blunt: "Increased incidence of diseases will be attributable to degradation of normal preventive medicine, waste disposal, water purification/distribution, electricity, and decreased ability to control disease outbreaks. Any urban area in Iraq that has received infrastructure damage will have similar problems."

The document proceeds to itemize the likely outbreaks. It mentions "acute diarrhea" brought on by bacteria such as E. coli, shigella, and salmonella, or by protozoa such as giardia, which will affect "particularly children," or by rotavirus, which will also affect "particularly children," a phrase it puts in parentheses. And it cites the possibilities of typhoid and cholera outbreaks.

The document warns that the Iraqi government may "blame the United States for public health problems created by the military conflict."

The second DIA document, "Disease Outbreaks in Iraq," is dated February 21, 1990, but the year is clearly a typo and should be 1991. It states: "Conditions are favorable for communicable disease outbreaks, particularly in major urban areas affected by coalition bombing." It adds: "Infectious disease prevalence in major Iraqi urban areas targeted by coalition bombing (Baghdad, Basrah) undoubtedly has increased since the beginning of Desert Storm. . . . Current public health problems are attributable to the reduction of normal preventive medicine, waste disposal, water purification and distribution, electricity, and the decreased ability to control disease outbreaks."

This document lists the "most likely diseases during next sixty-ninety days (descending order): diarrheal diseases (particularly children); acute respiratory illnesses (colds and influenza); typhoid; hepatitis A (particularly children); measles, diphtheria, and pertussis (particularly children); meningitis, including meningococcal (particularly children); cholera (possible, but less likely)."

Like the previous document, this one warns that the Iraqi government might "propagandize increases of endemic diseases."

The third document in this series, "Medical Problems in Iraq," is dated March 15, 1991. It says: "Communicable diseases in Baghdad are more widespread than usually observed during this time of the year and are linked to the poor sanitary conditions (contaminated water supplies and improper sewage disposal) resulting from the war. According to a United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF)/World Health Organization report, the quantity of potable water is less than 5 percent of the original supply, there are no operational water and sewage treatment plants, and the reported incidence of diarrhea is four times above normal levels. Additionally, respiratory infections are on the rise. Children particularly have been affected by these diseases."

Perhaps to put a gloss on things, the document states, "There are indications that the situation is improving and that the population is coping with the degraded conditions." But it adds: "Conditions in Baghdad remain favorable for communicable disease outbreaks."

The fourth document, "Status of Disease at Refugee Camps," is dated May 1991. The summary says, "Cholera and measles have emerged at refugee camps. Further infectious diseases will spread due to inadequate water treatment and poor sanitation."

The reason for this outbreak is clearly stated again. "The main causes of infectious diseases, particularly diarrhea, dysentery, and upper respiratory problems, are poor sanitation and unclean water. These diseases primarily afflict the old and young children."

The fifth document, "Health Conditions in Iraq, June 1991," is still heavily censored. All I can make out is that the DIA sent a source "to assess health conditions and determine the most critical medical needs of Iraq. Source observed that Iraqi medical system was in considerable disarray, medical facilities had been extensively looted, and almost all medicines were in critically short supply."

In one refugee camp, the document says, "at least 80 percent of the population" has diarrhea. At this same camp, named Cukurca, "cholera, hepatitis type B, and measles have broken out."

The protein deficiency disease kwashiorkor was observed in Iraq "for the first time," the document adds. "Gastroenteritis was killing children. . . . In the south, 80 percent of the deaths were children (with the exception of Al Amarah, where 60 percent of deaths were children)."

The final document is "Iraq: Assessment of Current Health Threats and Capabilities," and it is dated November 15, 1991. This one has a distinct damage-control feel to it. Here is how it begins: "Restoration of Iraq's public health services and shortages of major medical materiel remain dominant international concerns. Both issues apparently are being exploited by Saddam Hussein in an effort to keep public opinion firmly against the U.S. and its Coalition allies and to direct blame away from the Iraqi government."

It minimizes the extent of the damage. "Although current countrywide infectious disease incidence in Iraq is higher than it was before the Gulf War, it is not at the catastrophic levels that some groups predicted. The Iraqi regime will continue to exploit disease incidence data for its own political purposes."

And it places the blame squarely on Saddam Hussein. "Iraq's medical supply shortages are the result of the central government's stockpiling, selective distribution, and exploitation of domestic and international relief medical resources." It adds: "Resumption of public health programs . . . depends completely on the Iraqi government."

As these documents illustrate, the United States knew sanctions had the capacity to devastate the water treatment system of Iraq. It knew what the consequences would be: increased outbreaks of disease and high rates of child mortality. And it was more concerned about the public relations nightmare for Washington than the actual nightmare that the sanctions created for innocent Iraqis.

The Geneva Convention is absolutely clear. In a 1979 protocol relating to the "protection of victims of international armed conflicts," Article 54, it states: "It is prohibited to attack, destroy, remove, or render useless objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population, such as foodstuffs, crops, livestock, drinking water installations and supplies, and irrigation works, for the specific purpose of denying them for their sustenance value to the civilian population or to the adverse Party, whatever the motive, whether in order to starve out civilians, to cause them to move away, or for any other motive."

But that is precisely what the U.S. government did, with malice aforethought. It "destroyed, removed, or rendered useless" Iraq's "drinking water installations and supplies." The sanctions, imposed for a decade largely at the insistence of the United States, constitute a violation of the Geneva Convention. They amount to a systematic effort to, in the DIA's own words, "fully degrade" Iraq's water sources.

At a House hearing on June 7, Representative Cynthia McKinney, Democrat of Georgia, referred to the document "Iraq Water Treatment Vulnerabilities" and said: "Attacking the Iraqi public drinking water supply flagrantly targets civilians and is a violation of the Geneva Convention and of the fundamental laws of civilized nations."

Over the last decade, Washington extended the toll by continuing to withhold approval for Iraq to import the few chemicals and items of equipment it needed in order to clean up its water supply.

Last summer, Representative Tony Hall, Democrat of Ohio, wrote to then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright "about the profound effects of the increasing deterioration of Iraq's water supply and sanitation systems on its children's health." Hall wrote, "The prime killer of children under five years of age--diarrheal diseases--has reached epidemic proportions, and they now strike four times more often than they did in 1990. . . . Holds on contracts for the water and sanitation sector are a prime reason for the increases in sickness and death. Of the eighteen contracts, all but one hold was placed by the U.S. government. The contracts are for purification chemicals, chlorinators, chemical dosing pumps, water tankers, and other equipment. . . . I urge you to weigh your decision against the disease and death that are the unavoidable result of not having safe drinking water and minimum levels of sanitation."

For more than ten years, the United States has deliberately pursued a policy of destroying the water treatment system of Iraq, knowing full well the cost in Iraqi lives. The United Nations has estimated that more than 500,000 Iraqi children have died as a result of sanctions, and that 5,000 Iraqi children continue to die every month for this reason.

No one can say that the United States didn't know what it was doing.

See for Yourself

All the DIA documents mentioned in this article were found at the Department of Defense's Gulflink site.

To read or print documents:

1.go to www.gulflink.osd.mil

2.click on "Declassified Documents" on the left side of the front page

3.the next page is entitled "Browse Recently Declassified Documents"

4.click on "search" under "Declassifed Documents" on the left side of that page

5.the next page is entitled "Search Recently Declassified Documents"

6.enter search terms such as "disease information effects of bombing"

7.click on the search button

8.the next page is entitled "Data Sources"

9.click on DIA

10.click on one of the titles

It's not the easiest, best-organized site on the Internet, but I have found the folks at Gulflink to be helpful and responsive. Thomas J. Nagy

-- mark (mrobinowitz@nospam.igc.org), October 10, 2001.


Considering that the US government has deliberately targeted the children of Iraq for death as a way of getting even with Saddam Hussein, I guess we shouldn't be surprised at their callousness and inhumanity. But the hypocrisy of claiming that we are trying to help the people of Afghanistan, while providing a pittance of unsuitable assistance and meanwhile effectively closing down the real food aid programs that were on-going, is so immense that it fills me with sorrow and dread.

To put this simply, this post is just plain sleazy! Iraq is obviously since the world knows the take in Billions for food and medicine -- yet -- use the money for everything but!

As for Afghanistan, this is some of the most obscenely false BullSh*t, I have seen in quite a while. A simple 20 minute search of the web would show that these statements of yours, and the opinion piece you call an "article", are patently false. After a ONE day delay because of the strikes, food (65%-70% supplied by the US) -- through the World Food Program -- RE-started to go in BY TRUCK now being driven by Afghani drivers. Here we're talking about 50,000 TONS a month, the UN goal.

At the start of the build up, the US doubled it contributions ear marked for the feeding the Afghan people. BTW, of the 60 governments contributing to the UN's WFP, not a nickel comes from ANY middle eastern country.

The only people plotting to starve Afghani people is the Afghani government, the Taliban. They do NOT have a single effort in place to feed ANYONE except their "army", despite Billions earned from the Drug trade. They also, have emptied the warehouses where relief food was stored for their own use.

Why the Afghani people starve --

From UN report on Afghani Opium production, writen pre 9/11 --

"Opium-poppy cultivation in Afghanistan continues to increase, in spite of a devastating drought and "decrees" from the Taliban leadership banning poppy cultivation.

Poppy is cultivated at the expense of wheat and other food crops, desperately needed by the people of Afghanistan, and is planted on the best available land with productive soils, irrigation, and fertilizer, not on previously uncultivated or marginal lands.

The Explosion Of Poppy Cultivation Under The Taliban

In 1992-93, Afghanistan's poppy cultivation stood at about 20,000 hectares, mostly in Nangarhar province, which is located between Pakistan's North West Frontier province and Kabul in Afghanistan. Poppy then began to invade Helmand province where it has increased 800 percent since 1993. Helmand borders on Qandahar province, the Taliban's power base, and harbors traditional smuggling routes to Pakistan and Iran. Helmand also contains the HAVA irrigation system built by the United States Agency for International Development in the 1950's. This irrigated area had been modern Afghanistan's breadbasket. Massive poppy cultivation in Helmand has developed since the Taliban took control of the area, and with the full knowledge of Taliban authorities. The irrigation system minimizes the effects of drought and supports high-yielding opium poppy from year to year. Poppy cultivation overall for Afghanistan has climbed from 41,720 hectares in 1998 to 64,510 hectares in 2000, mainly as a result of increases in Helmand. Taliban-controlled Helmand province alone now accounts for 39 percent of the world's illicit opium.

Whose starving these poor people? The Taliban using all the fertile land to grow Opium instead of food and leaving the rest of the world (Mainly the US, for over a decade) to fed "their" people.

JB

-- Jackson Brown (Jackson_Brown@deja.com), October 10, 2001.


Ah, yes, the good old Guardian. It's hard to fathom that there are still a few people around who will believe all of their bilge.

-- Wellesley (wellesley@freport.net), October 10, 2001.

Hyperlink: http://argument.independent.co.uk/commentators/story.jsp? story=98861

Dominic Nutt : West risks culpability for a massive tragedy

11 October 2001 © Copyright Independent Digital (UK) Ltd, Fair Use for Educational and Research Purposes Only

As I watch and hear about the West's "bombs and bread" campaign being waged just over the border, I could almost laugh were the situation not so heartbreaking. I spent the summer in Afghanistan, researching the plight of a people on the verge of starvation, after drought had claimed a third successive harvest. A quarter of the population, according to the UN's World Food Programme (WFP), was then in need of food aid. And there was a desperate need to find the means and resources of delivering this, and other vital supplies, before the winter cut off isolated communities. Now, as the bombs and missiles fly and aid agencies are hamstrung, I know just how desperate the people of Afghanistan will be. People were already dying there when I left, just before the horrific events of 11 September. But at least then food was getting through. At least then plans were being put into place that could, even at that late stage, have averted the worst of the unfolding crisis. But now? We really don't know.

Let's get a few facts straight. The WFP figures referred to stated that more than five million people in Afghanistan would be dependent on food aid before the winter. Within days of 11 September, this estimate had grown to 7.5 million. Whatever the rights or wrongs of the military action now being taken, this implies a huge responsibility on the US and her coalition allies. Tony Blair, on the night that bombing began, spoke about a triple-track strategy covering military, diplomatic and humanitarian action. He went so far as to speak of a "humanitarian coalition" being formed to help the Afghan people. So the question to Mr Blair must now be, when are you going to start doing something meaningful towards this end? Hopefully he will pass that on to his friend George Bush. Because while we are neither military nor diplomatic experts, we do know about humanitarian aid – and we can state that air-dropping ration packs will be about as useful as dropping leaflets telling Afghan people not to worry.

Some more facts. The WFP says that just to supply sufficient food for 400,000 people in northern Afghanistan would require about 1,800 Hercules cargo flights a month – a rate far in excess of even the military missions now being flown. And, again, there are now 7.5 million people needing aid. Not that air-drops can get the aid where it is needed. Christian Aid's experience tells us that much will end up in the hands of warring parties, that fighting over the food will occur where it does reach hungry populations, and that the weakest – women, children and the old – will go without. After Angola, Afghanistan is the second most mined country in the world and dropping aid in open country will expose desperate people to increased risk from this menace. The policy of air-drops, then, is either extremely naive, or a cynical attempt to mask the real needs of the situation.

The only way of getting the food aid a month through is by truck. Yet most drivers will simply not venture on to the roads under threat of violence from the Taliban, the opposition or US strike aircraft. Quite simply, the bombing must stop as soon as possible, and the international community, under the auspices of the UN, must launch a huge and credible aid effort – within days, not weeks – guaranteeing the safe passage of convoys. If this is not done before the winter snows come, thousands – even hundreds of thousands – will certainly die. If this happens, then the "civilised" Western powers who have put so much store by humanitarian values will be culpable. A curious way, indeed, of winning Afghan hearts and minds.

Dominic Nutt is an emergencies officer for Christian Aid



-- Robert Riggs (rxr.999@worldnet.att.net), October 11, 2001.



West risks culpability for a massive tragedy

Let's see. Taliban is blocking food convoys, demanding a "tax" from the World Food Program, for aid being carried in trucks driven by Afgani drivers. The Taliban rulers get billions from drugs they grow on all the quality land (with irrigation) -- instead of food -- and steal the food out of the starving mouths of the afghani people, from the WFP warehouses...and the US is the reason that the Afgani people may starve?

Now don't help me, I'll figure this out sooner or later.

JB

-- Jackson Brown (Jackson_Brown@deja.com), October 11, 2001.


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