I regret that I haven't been writing recently on Afghanistan: especially since it's past time to write about trouble that aid workers are having in delivering food and services. Here are some aid statistics for the last ten months:
— 34 aid workers have been killed.
— Seventy-six have been abducted.
–Fifty-five convoys have been attacked, by either Taliban or criminals, six times higher than last year. The UN World Food Programme has lost 1,000 tonnes of food aid due to these depredations.
–Due to the convoy attacks, six weeks have passed since food has been delivered between Herat and Kandahar. And in another six weeks, snow will make many of these roads impassable for aid delivery–according to the UN director on the ground, Mr. Corsino, this will mean starvation for 400,000 Afghan citizens. This would be about 0.8% of the five million people who need some sort of food aid in Afghanistan.
Furthermore, according to Declan Walsh's article in The Guardian (who reported all of these statistics):
The Afghan education ministry says 400 schools in the south and east are shut because of violence. Taliban fighters have burned down 20 schools in Helmand in the past 15 months.
Further reading:
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon's Special Representative Mr. Koenigs on Afghanistan's aid delivery
UNICEF press release on the plight of Afghanistan's children from the Child Alert: Afghanistan report
UNAMA–UN Aid Mission to Afghanistan Web site
Photo: Luke Powell for the UN
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