George Monbiot is nudging our consciences again. In his article “Genocide or Peace” he notes
“the Afghan winter, like the Russian one, is absolute. Aid workers with long experience of Afghanistan report that after the first week of November, there is nothing you can do”
and…
One person requires 18kg of food per month to survive. If the UN’s projections are correct, and some 1.5 million manage to leave the country, around 6.1m starving people will be left behind. In five weeks, in other words, Afghanistan requires 580,000 tonnes of food to see its people through the winter, as well as tarpaulins, warm clothes, medicines and water supply and sanitation equipment. The food alone would fill 21,000 trucks or 19,000 Hercules transport planes. The convoy which reached Kabul to such acclaim yesterday has met barely a three thousandth of the country’s needs.
