Afghanistan - A Brutally Cold, Hungry Winter | War and Peace

Afghanistan - A Brutally Cold, Hungry Winter

Published November 08, 2008 @ 12:56PM PT

Earlier this week, a friend in Kabul sent me a report by the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), warning of a possible famine in Afghanistan this winter.

Winter usually offers a reprieve from Afghanistan's seemingly endless conflict, when the brutally cold temperatures impose a temporary truce. (Apparently not even the Taliban enjoy freezing to death.)

Given the escalating violence, including the recent attacks against aid workers, it's unclear whether this winter will be as calm as years past.

At the same time, winter this year threatens its own humanitarian disaster. Following a "pitiable harvest" caused in part by a severe drought, millions of Afghans risk going hungry.

In August, Oxfam reported that "up to 5 million Afghans face severe food shortages."

The report released last week by RUSI puts the number of those at risk even higher: "an estimated 8.4 million Afghans, perhaps a third of the nation, are now suffering from ‘chronic and transitory food insecurity’."

The Afghan Government and aid agencies have not been able to pre-position adequate food in the most vulnerable areas. According to one Afghan official: "Snowfall is imminent… aid has not reached the most needy regions."

Part of the reason for this is the deteriorating security situation, which limits the number of areas that aid agencies can access. So far this year, 31 aid workers have been killed in Afghanistan.

At the same time, there simply isn't enough funding. The Afghan Government and the UN launched an emergency appeal back in July, when the extent of the food crisis became evident. Yet as of early October, only 16% of the appeal had been funded.

Personal note - It's hard to describe just how cold Afghanistan gets during the winter. The winter I was there, I would spend a good portion of each evening staring at the small, dilapidated heater in my room, debating whether it was better to freeze as I slept, or risk asphyxiation from escaping smoke. Asphyxiation usually won, but not by much.

Actually the worst of both worlds, as the heater would invariably go out about 2:00 in the morning, which meant going to sleep warm and waking up to a room where the temperature huddled around freezing.

And, needless to say, I was living in complete and utter luxury. I can't imagine what it must have been like in rural areas that winter - especially given reports that even wolves were stalking small villages.

[Photo from the BBC]

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Comments (4)

I hope its gets bitter cold and helps save some of our troops lives by freezing some of our enemy.The more the better.

Posted by Phil Rautine on 11/08/2008 @ 04:40PM PT
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Hello,
My name is Janet Ginsburg and I edit a news aggregator - http://www.TrackerNews.net - that covers health issues, humanitarian work and technology that supports both. Tracker's got a few twists: Headlines are not organized by category, nor is there a standard navigation bar. Rather, stories are grouped for contextual relevance. News articles are often paired with research, blog posts, book reviews, websites etc. Unlike most aggregators, it is not so much dateline driven as content-driven.
I have been researching links on cold weather humanitarian aid and coming up short. I was wondering if you might have any leads? I live in Chicago, so understand the difficulties of cold. How is water distributed? Food? Fuel? Shelter? Clothing? How does cold weather affect morbidity and mortality?
Thank you for your help!
best,
Janet
p.s. re Tracker:blog: http://trackerblog.instedd.orgtwitter: http://twitter.com/TrackerNews

Posted by J A Ginsburg on 12/26/2008 @ 04:35AM PT
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Janet,

Thanks very much for the post -- as for delivering aid in cold-weather, the two recent crises that come to mind are Afghanistan and the Pakistan earthquake, from earlier this year (see http://humanitarianrelief.change.org/blog?category_id=1138).

MBK

Posted by Michael Bear on 12/26/2008 @ 08:38AM PT
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Thank you for this posting. God help the people of Afghanistan.

Posted by Mariam Auqeley on 04/01/2009 @ 09:20PM PT
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Michael has worked for NGOs in Afghanistan, across east and central Africa, and Iraq. Prior to going overseas, he worked on a project providing assistance to the United Nations on the application of International Humanitarian Law to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.