Will next US president rethink Afghanistan?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7674623.stm
Ravaged by war and in the grip of a terrible drought, the people of Afghanistan are in desperate need of foreign help. The BBC's Damian Grammaticas travels to the central highlands to assess the situation and asks whether the next US president will need to rethink America's strategy against al-Qaeda and the Taleban.
In the hospital in Bamiyan a nurse is examining Mohammed Hakim. He is almost two years old, but his tiny figure is shrivelled and weak, little more than skin and bone.
Every month, 20 severely malnourished children are being admitted to this hospital. Their wasted figures are a warning.
After decades of war and neglect and now the worst drought in a generation, one in three Afghans - 11 million people - needs aid.
Sitting on a bed in the hospital's therapeutic feeding ward and cradling her listless son on her lap, Fatima told me her family only has enough food to last a month.
"Everyone in my village needs oil, needs flour, needs everything," she said. "When the winter snow comes we will be cut off."
"How will your son survive?" I asked Fatima. "I will pray to God to help him," was her answer.
Dr Ghulam Nadir, acting director of the hospital, says: "Here in Bamiyan around 8-10% of children are suffering severe malnutrition, but we cannot admit all of them because of a lack of space in our hospital."
Mohammed Hakkim was severely malnourished
He says he needs three wards to deal with the malnutrition cases he is seeing, but he has just the one ward, so all but the most severe cases are turned away.
Bamiyan's hospital gets no money from Afghanistan's central government. It has to rely on aid agencies and the Aga Khan Foundation for funding.
The hospital has a generator for electricity, but can't even pay for the fuel to run it 24 hours a day.
It is all evidence of a glaring discrepancy in the foreign investment that has been put into Afghanistan.
Currently nearly $100m a day is being spent on the war, yet since 2001 just $7m a day has been spent on Afghans themselves, according to the Agency Co-ordinating Body for Afghan Relief, an umbrella organisation representing 100 aid agencies working in Afghanistan.
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COMMENT: What is the benefit of WAR to these poor Afghanis??
