On The Third Hand

Monday, 04 Feb 2002

Starving Afghans [permalink]

It seems we still do have thousands in danger of starving in Afghanistan. There's a very interesting article at BBC online, by a reporter in western Afghanistan. The article mentions "the fighting" twice as a reason for people starving. It tells a sad tale about a baby that died and an even sadder one about families selling daughters to buy food.

Excuse me? I have a question for this agency "Oxfam" which is distributing food in the region. I would very much like to know why they are allowing food to be distributed in such a way that the people must pay for it? Ok... they "explain the system" - this is what the article says:

Much of the food which has come in this weekend has gone straight to "grain lenders" in the bazaar. Last year they gave villagers food as credit.Now the villagers have to repay their creditors before they can eat themselves.
An Oxfam aid worker explains the system: "When we are distributing the food a very big part of this food is going back to pay the shopkeepers," he says. "Even if they are hungry they have to pay their debts back to the shop keepers."

Now, it seems to me that the problem stems from some time ago. Why was it that these "grain lenders" had the food to lend in the first place, when others had none? How much of that food that was lent was food distributed by Oxfam in the first place? I'm willing to bet that most of it was, considering that area was one of the hardest hit by the drought.

Looks like we have a situation where improper distribution was occurring already -- for whatever reason. I would assume the agency was only allowed to distribute food after these shopkeepers got their take. So now Oxfam is in a position of trying to get enough food up there to let the bosses have their share, plus enough food to let the people give the bosses back "lent" food and have enough for themselves too.

Of course, we mustn't think that the problems might be linked back to the shopkeepers who somehow had enough food to "lend" while everyone was starving. We certainly must not ask how they ended up with all that extra food in the first place, a question that might imply criticism of those lovely people in the agency. No, we must accept that it is all the fault of the fighting, and thus -- by sweetly subtle implication -- the US and its allies.
11:13 EST [forum discussions]

Broken Breaking News

Yesterday I was listening to Fox (my television is not in the same room as the computer) when they had a "breaking news story" about a body being found in Karachi and thought to be that of Daniel Pearl. I wanted to blog it, but the Fox newsreaders kept saying "unconfirmed". I checked the WSJ site, which I figured would have it posted as front page news, even if they don't normally update the site that often. Not a mention. I decided to wait for definite confirmation.

Perhaps I should be given a job at ABC, who somehow never thought of confirming the story with the WSJ. Neither Fox nor MSNBC thought of that either, but both (to give credit) did mention that it was unconfirmed. What were these guys thinking? I'm not a reporter and checking WSJ was the first thing I thought of doing! What the heck are they teaching in the journalism schools nowadays? (Don't answer that...)
11:13 EST Start or join a forum discussion