Getting food to Kabul's masses

"See this card?" asks Laurent Saillard, a WFP consultant in charge of food distribution, taking away the green cards of a few men and women standing around him. "Sorry. It's a fake one," he pronounces, ripping the cards up before their eyes and causing cries of shock from people who thought they'd be going home with a bag of wheat.

"The idea was to cover the gap between when we came back in here after the airstrikes were over and for when we can restart our normal distribution programs," Saillard says. "It's not ideal because it creates dependence," he says, adding that the WFP would soon move back to usual programs, based on food-for-work schemes.

A paying job, in fact, is for many Afghans a more scarce commodity than food. Mr. Yusef, the farmer, and Mr. Ahmad, the tailor, haven't had work in quite a long time. More than two decades of war and three consecutive years of drought have done so much damage to Afghan society that it is often hard to discern which one hurts more.

Yusef grew vegetables up in Bagram, north of Kabul, now the home of the main airbase employed by US and British troops.

"Right now, there isn't enough water, so I'm not farming anymore," Yusef says. When peace or rain arrive - hopefully both - he will return to the fields he calls home. But what were once farmlands are now dusty plains that are fertile only with landmines. UN officials say a massive demining program must be undertaken before displaced Afghans can safely begin to go home again.

Ahmad's home, like so many things here, has been destroyed. When Taliban forces were on a campaign to gain territory four years ago, they came plowing through his home in the village of Estalif, about 30 kilometers north of Kabul, and destroyed it. They burned his and all of his neighbors' homes, he says, and his tailoring equipment along with it.

"I came to Kabul just with the clothes I have with me," says Ahmad, a father of 12 children.

Such stories are common, as are reports that the Taliban massacred thousands of the country's ethnic Hazara people during their rule. Afghanistan's interim foreign minister, Abdullah Abdullah, said his government wants to organize a war-crimes tribunal to bring to justice the men who perpetrated such crimes.

Ahmad, however, is more interested in making sure his family gets fed. "I don't want revenge," he says. As he speaks, another man muscles into the conversation.

He earned a university degree in engineering, but has been out of work since the Taliban came to power.

"The distribution of wheat for one or two days won't solve our problems in Afghanistan," says the man, Abdull Latif.

"Please don't forget about us in the future," Abdull adds. "We don't believe any of the governments here can solve our problems without the help of the outside world."

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