[ot] [!nt] \n2+0\

[integer at www.god-emil.dk]

At the UN conference a request was made to call Israel a racist state. 


> > Those who think they can wipe out terrorism by means of war are as
>ridiculous
> > as those who think they can bring poverty to an end in this world by
>handing
> > out food to the poor.




>Afghanistan facing humanitarian disaster Famine Hunger and disease could
>kill millions, aid agencies warn
>Steven Morris and Felicity Lawrence
>Wednesday September 19, 2001 - The Guardian
>http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,554306,00.html
>
>Aid workers forced to flee Afghanistan warned yesterday that the country
>would be pushed into catastrophe unless the US threat of retaliation for
>last week's terror attacks is withdrawn.
>Even before the attacks, aid agencies issued dire warnings that Afghanistan
>was heading for disaster. A three year drought on top of two decades of war
>and Soviet occupation has left more than 5m people - a quarter of the
>population - threatened by starvation.
>Remote villages will soon be cut off by snow without the stockpiles of
>supplies from international agencies that might have carried them through
>the winter. In the cities there have been crippling increases in the price
>of food, and epidemics are threatening to take hold in the packed and filthy
>refugee camps.
>Dominic Nutt, emergency officer for Christian Aid, said: "It's as if a mass
>grave has been dug behind millions of people. We can drag them back from it
>or push them in. We could be looking at millions of deaths."
>Mr Nutt recently travelled from the city of Herat to a village in the hills
>of the Ghor province called Barkhol, a 200 mile journey which took two days
>on rutted tracks. He found a community in crisis.
>"As we came over the mountain pass we looked down on a scene of
>devastation," he said. "The area looked as if it had been scorched. What
>should have been wheat fields was nothing more than stubble."
>Villagers told Mr Nutt they had got through almost all their food supplies
>and had even eaten seeds which should have been planted for next year's
>crop. Large families were sharing one piece of bread a day. They could not
>leave because there was no transport. Aid agencies had hoped to get supplies
>to villages like Barkhol before they were cut off but the US threat means
>that this will almost certainly be impossible.
>Mr Nutt also visited the bleak Maslakh camp near Herat. There it is
>estimated that up to 40 people are dying every day, many because they arrive
>too weak to survive after trying to hold out in their villages.
>They have food but conditions are harsh. Most have to dig a hole in the
>sandy soil and try to suspend what ever cloth they have over it as a
>makeshift shelter. Water is scarce and in some cases contaminated.
>Sanitation is basic.
>The picture is just as severe in other parts of the country. In the central
>parts, the UN's world food program has heard reports of Afghans driven to
>eat poisonous grass which causes paralysis, while those in the north have
>been eating meals of locusts mixed with animal feed.
>The world food program says that as many as 20% of children in some regions
>are dying before the age of five and the average life expectancy is 40. But
>it has been forced to suspend its $150m feeding program
>The picture is further complicated by the mass movement of people within
>Afghanistan and across its borders. More than 2m people have been driven
>from their homes by the wars and drought. The UN High Commission for
>Refugees said at least another million could flee if the US attacked.
>Aid agencies point out that many of those who may be hurt are unlikely to
>have any idea about what has been happening in America.