November 10, 2001	Saturday	Shaba’an 23, 1422

UNITED NATIONS: A senior UN human rights official recently criticized the US decision to simultaneously bombard Afghanistan with bombs and food.

Jean Ziegler of Switzerland, the Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, termed the decision a “tragic mistake” and was derisive in describing it.

“One bomb, one bread, one bomb, one bread,” he says of the US military-cum-humanitarian operation under way in Afghanistan.

The food is delivered in aerodynamic packages that are yellow — the same colour as deadly cluster bombs that have descended like snow flakes over the Afghan landscape, Ziegler says. Making matters worse, much of the food may have landed in minefields, threatening the lives of those who venture to gather them up.

“This has to stop,” says Ziegler.

Ziegler adds that the US military food drops violate most UN criteria for humanitarian actions.

These must be “neutral, impartial and inspired by humanitarian concerns,” he says. Otherwise, relief workers would be vulnerable to suspicion of being partisans. Such suspicion resulted in the deaths of UN relief workers in East Timor and Burundi, he adds.

The 37,000 individually wrapped food packages are emblazoned with the stars-and-stripes US emblem. They are being unloaded on Afghanistan even as US combat aircraft sustain their bombing raids on a country ravaged by more than two decades of military conflict.

The paradox is not lost on at least one US comedian, who says the United States is dropping 60-pound packages on 40-pound people.

Al Jazeera, the Qatar-based Arabic language television network, also has made much of the bombs-and-bread strategy, noting that from the outset, it has been met with skepticism in the Arab world.

“Were the food packages meant to feed the children, while the cruise missiles and cluster bombs were aimed at killing their fathers?” Executive Editor Sr Sami Haddad asked.

On Tuesday, a UN spokesman told a news briefing on Afghanistan that in the village of Qala Shaker two children picked up a “bomblet” and were seriously injured when it exploded.

The US food drops also have been criticized by a leading relief organization, the Paris-based Medecins Sans Frontieres, also known as Doctors without Borders.

Morten Rostrup, the group’s president, says “the food drops are a superficial and misleading gesture,” adding: “It is extremely unlikely that these few items of assistance reach the poorest and most vulnerable Afghans.” —Dawn/The InterPress News Service.