Food shortage in Afghanistan

The head of the world food programme has condemned the international community for not stepping in to avert a potentially devastating famine in Afghanistan. The organization is warning that around the world 45 million people are now on the edge of starvation in 43 countries. They say in Afghanistan millions will die within weeks if the international community doesn't help. David Beasley has described the next six months as potentially hell on earth for the country. It is as bad as you possibly can imagine, in fact we're now looking at the worst humanitarian crisis on earth. 95 of the people don't have enough food and now we're looking at 23 million people marching towards starvation. Out of that almost nine million are knocking on famine's door the winter months are coming, we are coming out of a drought. The next six months are going to be catastrophic, well our world affects, editor John Simpson is currently in Bamyan in central Afghanistan and gave me an update on how desperate the situation is on the ground. It's getting bad and what the World Food Programme people, David Beasley and others are trying to do is to attract the world's attention not to a disaster that's underway but the disaster that could happen really within a matter of weeks, here I am in Bamyan which is one of the main centers of hunger it's also of course the place where the Taliban 20 years ago blew up the sixth century figures of the Buddha but they wouldn't really get much sense that there was hunger. Right now because the shops have got a lot of food particularly fruit which has been grown over the past few months but there has been a serious drought here and in other parts of Afghanistan and that's causing all sorts of problems. I went to see just this morning a widow who's got seven children she lives in up virtually in a hut just up the mountain almost beside the Buddha and her children ages from about 16 down to about three. Her husband died some months ago, she is absolutely on her last legs in terms of knowing how she's going to feed the children. It was extraordinarily moving to speak to her, I have to tell you it's difficult to listen to her without tears running down your face but she like millions of people in this country that can just get by. At the moment directly the weather gets worse she'll be in serious trouble, I mean the world food programme is warning about famine in many countries and the particular dilemma is how you help people in Afghanistan without propping up the Taliban. That is the big problem and that's of course why there are few foreigners here at the moment. Why so many aid programs have scaled up their operations down to some extent the widow I spoke to said that she could easily get enough oil and flour under the old government but directly the Taliban came that all finished them. The Taliban themselves are showing signs of real fear about what's happening and the suggestion is from David Beasley of the world food program, for instance, that they're actually helping quite strongly to get food sorted out because they know that if there really is a question that 25 million people are in danger of starvation that will destroy the country and destroy the Taliban as well. So for the time being they may have acted appallingly badly in all sorts of parts of this country but they're desperate to get a bit of outside help.