Skip to main content

Food Drop Fiasco

Loompanics Unlimited: " Shortly after the U.S. attacked Afghanistan for supposedly sheltering Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda, our TV screens were filled with images of planes dropping food rations into the bombarded country. The little yellow packets were shoved out of cargo holds by the thousands. You could almost hear the government patting itself on the back as it said, “See, we're actually helping the starving people of Afghanistan.”

Trouble is, those food drops were a complete disaster. News reports mentioned some of the problems with the humanitarian effort, but there's a lot they either didn't tell us or got wrong. A nonprofit aid organization called Partners International Foundation decided to see what was going on. These guys aren't granola-crunching flower-children – they used to be in Special Forces units of the U.S. military. And they didn't content themselves to sit in an office interviewing people by phone. They went into Afghanistan during the heaviest part of the war to find out what was happening for themselves.

Here's what they discovered:

* You know those little packets in vitamin bottles and clothes that are supposed to keep them fresh? Well, many of the little meal packs dropped on Afghanistan contained one of those packets (called a desiccant) to keep the food fresh. Unfortunately, the Afghans aren't familiar with desiccants so they tore them open and ate the powder. Some thought it was medicine, so they noshed it straight. Others figured it was a funky American spice, so they sprinkled it on their beans, rice, or pasta. Lots of Afghans got sick, though we don't know if any deaths occurred. In fact, it's hard to say whether people got sick from chowing down on desiccant or because the food in the packets was usually spoiled.

The food in the packets is usually spoiled. These plastic-wrapped meals weren't made to be dropped from 25,000 to 40,000 feet.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The Jodie Lane Project Responds to City Council Testimony

The Jodie Lane Project : New York, NY -- February 12, 2004. The City Council Transportation Committee held a hearing today to investigate the causes of Jodie S. Lane’s tragic electrocution death on January 16th. The testimony revealed a startling lack of oversight on the part of the Public Services Commission, charged with overseeing Con Edison’s compliance with the National Electric Safety Code, last revised in 1913. With only 5 inspectors at their disposal, the Public Services Commission relies entirely on Con Edison to report safety problems. Because Con Edison only reports incidents resulting in injury or death, the PSC was aware of only 15 shock incidents in the last 5 years. Con Edison has acknowledged that it actually received 539 reports of shock incidents in the same period, effectively admitting to misleading the PSC by an order of magnitude. It is not only this discrepancy that is alarming, but also the fact that the Public Services Commission, charged with ensuring

New York Post Online Edition

news : "December 29, 2003 -- WASHINGTON - Startling new Army statistics show that strife-torn Baghdad - considered the most dangerous city in the world - now has a lower murder rate than New York. The newest numbers, released by the Army's 1st Infantry Division, reveal that over the past three months, murders and other crimes in Baghdad are decreasing dramatically and that in the month of October, there were fewer murders per capita there than the Big Apple, Chicago, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. The Bush administration and outside experts are touting these new figures as a sign that, eight months after the fall of Saddam Hussein, major progress is starting to be made in the oft-criticized effort by the United States and coalition partners to restore order and rebuild Iraq. 'If these numbers are accurate, they show that the systems we put in place four months ago to develop a police force based on the principles of a free and democratic society are starting to