Diverted Aid

As the missiles explode, media probes are looking deeper into Afghanistan and the practices of the ruling Taliban. This week, we learn that aid shipments, particularly of food, are being diverted and that the starving population is receiving little if any benefit from them. This is news only in the sense that the practice is newly discovered. When I toured Central Asia this month, I heard from veteran aid workers, all of whom had worked inside Afghanistan and some of whom had dealt directly with the Taliban, that the regime has been diverting aid shipments for years, either to feed its troops or to sell. In other cases, villagers for whom the supplies were intended were forced to pay the little they had to receive what was meant for them for free. Against this backdrop, one worker said he had conducted scientific surveys in 1999 that showed that 40 percent of children were malnourished. More recently, we've heard of people eating grass and weeds in an effort to cling to life.

Ed Fowler

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(c) 2001 Millennium Relief & Development Services, vol. 1 no. 1
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