The Real Afghan People

by Dominic Knutt

Dominic Nutt is a journalist working for a relief organization called Christian Aid. He was in Afghanistan just before the attacks in the US on September 11th. In this report, he describes what life was like in Afghanistan before September 11th, and he talks about what will probably happen to the Afghan people as a result of Western military action in Afghanistan.

JOURNALIST - a newspaper reporter

Afghan villages

Nutt says:
I spent a month working in the western and central parts of Afghanistan, and I have just returned. In reality, life there is very different to the way it has been described to us after September 11th.

85% of the people are subsistence farmers and their families and they live in small villages. Most of these villages have no newspapers, no radios, no televisions, no postal service. Most of the people who live in the villages have never heard of the World Trade Center. No-one ever talked to me about Osama bin Laden. I saw no sign of sympathy for the Taliban. The most important thing in the lives of these people was to try to find enough food to feed themselves and their families.

SUBSISTENCE farming produces just enough to keep alive

Hunger is the real fear

Hunger is the real fear of most the people of Afghanistan. Although the West is preparing for military action, the greatest danger for many Afghanis is that they will die of hunger. Even before September 11th, the situation in Afghanistan was desperate. There has been a long drought. Millions of people were threatened by starvation and would depended on food aid to survive.

One camp is called Maslakh. In English, the name means "slaughter". The camp runs for about 2 miles [3 kilometres] along the sides of a dirt track in dry and stony countryside. Hundreds of people wait by this road, holding out their hands to beg from any traffic that goes by. There are about 150,000 people living in the camp of Maslakh. Before September 11th, the charity Medecines Sans Frontieres ran a special clinic at the camp. It gave food to 1,500 children under the age of 5, who were undernourished. Already more of these young children are dying: in May 2001, only one died; in August, 20 died.

DESPERATE - in an extremely bad situation

DROUGHT - a very long period without rain

STARVATION is dying from not having enough food to eat.
Someone who is THREATENED with starvation is in risk of dying from not having the food they need

UNDERNOURISHED: not getting enough food to eat

Aid workers leave after Sept 11th

But by September 13th, foreign aid workers were starting to leave Afghanistan because of the danger from military action. Food aid suddenly stopped coming into the country. The United Nations estimates that 2.5 million people face starvation because of the present crisis in Afghanistan. If you add that number to the 5 million people who face starvation because of drought, that makes 7.5 million people - one third of the population of Afghanistan.

ESTIMATE - to try to judge the amounts

Farmers, not fanatics

The real people of Afghanistan are not fanatics, they are farmers who are struggling to keep themselves and their families alive.
You can read some of their stories:

FANATIC - a dangerous person with extreme views

Afghanistan is a huge graveyard

In some ways, I am not so worried about the bombing, because the population of Afghanistan is very spread out, and there are not many targets to destroy. Of course, I fear for the innocent Afghanis who will probably be killed by the bombs, but that is not the worst danger.

The worst thing is that many thousands of Afghan people are left in villages and camps where there is now no food. Many more are fleeing into the countryside, or to the borders of Afghanistan, but there is no food in those places either. And there is no way to escape.

Afghanistan is a huge graveyard. We saw thousands of innocent Americans being murdered. But we do not need to hold hundreds of thousands of innocent Afghans responsible for that.