Stardate 20011210.1637 (On Screen): As war dies down and the Afghan resistance settles in in various parts of the nation, and as order and security are being reestablished, the flow of humanitarian aid, especially of food, is reaching flood proportions. The "Friendship" bridge from Uzbekistan has been reopened and trains are now moving over it carrying supplies. Truck convoys from all neighboring nations are moving vast quantities of aid, especially wheat. The pace of movement
and distribution of aid has drastically increased in just the last week, and with the fall of Kandahar and re-establishment of order there and in Spin Boldak, it's looking like the only real trouble spot remaining is in the vicinity of Jalalabad. (The last remaining substantial al Qaeda force is holding out there at Tora Bora.) In many cases the distribution of aid is now above expectations, and it is now expected that widespread starvation can be avoided in most of the country. The threat of banditry to the supplies appears to be dissipating. The situation is by no means ideal and there are many places where the aid agencies still can't really go, but it is substantially better than it was just two weeks ago.
Guess who's paying for most of that? We are; the people of the United States. $195 million is being distributed by the US Agency for International Development to various aid agencies of all kinds, especially the World Food Program. It's come in many forms. For example, the famous (notorious) airdrop program during the war ended up costing nearly $50 million, and dropped more than two million daily rations into Afghanistan. Despite the condemnations by certain groups for that program, it's difficult to believe that many lives were not saved by two million people-days worth of food. But that was perhaps not as cost effective as things like USAID Food For Peace program which has given the WFP $38 million dollars to purchase and move 72,000 metric tons of food into Afghanistan. Other grants to other agencies have purchased tens of thousands more tons of food and paid for its transport. There has also been substantial purchase and movement of blankets, plastic sheeting (which is extremely important for creating shelters in refugee camps), and medical supplies, not to mention purchasing trucks. When all is said and done, the United States has provided more than 80% of the food aid for Afghanistan.
To listen to some people, the United States has been conducting a brutal and wrong-headed war against the Afghan people themselves which will result in millions of innocent deaths there. I must say we have a strange way of going about it. You find a lot of people out there who have recriminations for the US, but the evidence is that most of them don't live in Afghanistan. There have been a lot of winners in this war, but the biggest winners of all have been the Afghan people. (discuss)
