U.S. Flies in Relief to Snowbound Afghan Villages

[Rose Siding]

SAGHAR, Afghanistan (Reuters) - Hundreds of Afghans in a snowbound mountain town cheered from the rooftops on Friday as a U.S. military plane air-dropped emergency supplies to an area where dozens have died during the worst winter in decades.

Cut off for the past month, Saghar's beleaguered residents stared skywards as airmen aboard a C-130 aircraft pushed out parachutes laden with a total 20 tons of beans, biscuits, wheat and halal meals supplied by the World Food Programme.

Saghar, in the central province of Ghor, sits 7,800 feet up in the mountains some 100 miles east of Herat, the largest city in western Afghanistan.

The U.S. military also flew Black Hawk helicopters into Saghar carrying medics, soldiers and journalists. The choppers cannot carry as much food supplies as a C-130.
...
The flight across the craggy mountaintops took the Black Hawks to the limit of their altitude range, underlining the risks relief workers must take to reach these stricken people in their mud-walled houses.

http://www.boston.com/news/world/middleeast/articles/2005/02/25/us_flies_in_relief_to_snowbound_afghan_villages/

[hector459]

1. At last, something to be proud of!

eom

[Up2Late]

2. Yup, Nobody here seamed to care when I posted this the other day either

I guess it goes to show, a "Good News" Channel would never make any money.
<http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=1619884&mesg_id=1619884>

[Rose Siding]

3. This is good. We should be able to expect this of our govt.

But I don't begrudge anyone a lack of enthusiasm at this point. One NGO after another packs up and leaves Afghanistan, citing instability and attacks. There are allegations that US agents embed with them, risking their safety. We've made an awful mess there.

Even Doctors Without Borders bailed, leveling this indictment:

It is with a deep feeling of sadness that Médecins Sans Frontières has decided to close all of its medical programmes in Afghanistan. This decision has come nearly two months after the killing of our five colleagues in a deliberate attack on June 2nd. The clearly marked MSF car was ambushed on a road in Badghis province. This targeted killing of five of our colleagues is unprecedented in the history of MSF, although we have been delivering medical humanitarian assistance in some of the most violent conflicts around the world over the last 30 years.

The lack of a framework for humanitarian action, the lack of respect for the safety of aid workers is seen in the governments' either unwillingness or inability to provide a credible investigation of this atrocity and to provide sufficient legal follow-up in terms of arrest and prosecution, of those who are guilty....

And from his colleague...

As Kenny Gluck just said, over the last 24 years MSF has provided health care throughout very difficult periods in Afghanistan regardless of which party or which group was in power. So it is with immense sadness that we take the decision to leave. We've come to the conclusion that we cannot sacrifice the security of our volunteers while we're being specifically targeted and while groups are seeking to target and kill humanitarian aid workers. But we also do know that ultimately those who will suffer are the sick and the needy who will need assistance in Afghanistan. The violence directed against humanitarian aid workers has come in a context where we feel that the US-backed coalition has contributed to the blurring of identities. The US-backed coalition has constantly sought to use and co-opt humanitarian assistance to build support for its military and political ambitions. And MSF denounces this attempt to co-opt humanitarian aid, to use humanitarian aid to win hearts and minds. By doing so, providing aid is no longer perceived as being a neutral and impartial act, and this is endangering humanitarian aid workers and this is jeopardizing the assistance to the Afghan people, the assistance which is needed. Some of you may know that in the month of May this year we addressed the coalition with the issue of the "famous" leaflets, with a picture of a young Afghan girl carrying a bag of wheat which was distributed throughout southern Afghanistan and which said that in order for the humanitarian assistance to continue they would need to pass on information about Taliban, Al Qaeda and Gulbaddin.

http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/publications/other/afghanistan_pressconference_7-28-2004_pf.html

So this aid in the article was good -no doubt about it- but we are so far in the hole that it's hard to see daylight.