KANDAHAR, AFGHANISTAN — Afghanistan's food crisis may turn into a festering problem as prices remain stubbornly high, a United Nations official says, and local authorities are already complaining that emergency measures are not enough to handle the rising hunger.
The World Food Program has launched a $77-million program to provide extra food for Afghans who found themselves shut out of the market as prices climbed sharply in recent months.
But during a tour of food distribution points in Kandahar yesterday, the WFP's top official in the region said he's hearing complaints that the new help is not enough, and expressed concerns about what will happen if the crisis continues.
"What comes next after this program expires in June?" said Tony Banbury, WFP Asian director. The emergency program has eased prices, he said, but wheat remains two or three times as costly as it was in Afghanistan at the end of last year.
Afghans are seen during a demonstration against rising food prices, in Jalalabad, the provincial capital of Nangarhar province east of Kabul, April 22. Afghanistan has allocated US$50 million to buy food from neighbouring countries, an official said, amid skyrocketing prices of food staples like wheat. Panicked Afghans have rushed to shops in recent days to purchase rice, flour and cooking oil. (AP)
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Even with the extra assistance, Mr. Banbury said, authorities in Kandahar estimate that 6,000 families recently displaced by fighting have received no help.
The Afghan government is also pushing the WFP to expand its programs to include more categories of vulnerable people, he added.
"We do need to be prepared for the at least real possibility of sustained higher prices over the medium term," Mr. Banbury said.
The WFP delegation is scheduled to meet President Hamid Karzai today for talks about the situation. The visit coincides with UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's announcement in Switzerland yesterday that he will lead a top-level task force to tackle food shortages and escalating prices.
Mr. Ban said high food prices "could touch off a cascade of related crises affecting trade, economic growth, social progress and even political security around the world."
The food situation has already affected Afghanistan's stability, officials say. The Afghan Red Crescent Society says increasing hunger in the past month has driven hundreds of villagers from their homes and forced them to flee into urban areas or across the border into Pakistan.
A report published last week by the U.S. Agency for International Development predicts price hikes will hit Afghanistan even harder because of poor rains in the latest wet season, hurting the annual cereal crop.
Adding to the problems is a lack of supply from Pakistan, which has imposed a ban on wheat exports to ease its own food shortages.
Rising violence in Afghanistan's south and east have also exacerbated the situation, and Mr. Banbury said the conflict makes it difficult to know how badly the people in parts of a province such as Kandahar are eating.
But the hunger was obvious in the faces of people who crowded outside a WFP depot in Kandahar city yesterday. Shopkeepers complained that the mob was blocking traffic, as the WFP staff opened their rusting metal gates and started calling names from a list.
One of the names called was that of Sayyed Mohammed, a white-bearded man from a family of farm labourers. Like others on a fixed wage, he said, the rising food prices have left him with so little to feed his family's children that they suffer stomach pains.
"Sometimes the children cry, and we give them a bit of bread, but we cannot give them enough," Mr. Mohammed said. "Maybe we will start begging or stealing, I don't know."
The old man said his family of 26 people is crowded into a mud-walled house with six rooms. Such poor families have little to sacrifice when facing a food crisis, Mr. Banbury said; first they stop whatever small discretionary spending they might have enjoyed, and then usually cut back on education and health costs.
Other coping strategies often include selling off personal belongings, even meagre possessions such as goats, blankets and pots and pans, Mr. Banbury said, which can cause other problems for the family.
Hunger can also force men to leave their families to look for work in other areas, he added; in southern Afghanistan, he said such work might include joining the Taliban.
Canada is the second-largest donor for the WFP in Afghanistan, Mr. Banbury said, and was the first to contribute to the emergency appeal with a donation of $10-million in addition to $25-million already committed in late 2007. Including the extra assistance, WFP officials say they're now feeding 717,000 of the approximately one million people who live in Kandahar province.
With a report from Associated Press
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What they spend
The more income spent on food, the greater the vulnerability to food price increases, and Vietnamese are among the most vulnerable in the world. Here is the average percentage of income spent on food in various countries.
40%
Vietnam
33%
India
28%
China
26%
Thailand
26%
Indonesia
15%
Malaysia
11%
Canada
10%
United States
8%
Singapore
Source: U.S. Department of Agriculture
100
