Afghans demonstrate against rising food prices as the country faces a hunger crisis. So, how is hunger in Afghanistan related to our US fundraiser? Food justice is the human right to nutritious, sustainable food availability for each person regardless of race, income or residency. Governments like to call hunger the innocuous, sanitizing "food insecurity," which really masks that food injustice is a form of oppression because the impact is impaired health, education, and wages that perpetuate a cycle of poverty. Our long-term goal should be food sustainability with environmentally sound agricultural practices. Now, crisis requires filling up the food banks -- here and in Afghanistan. However, if we surge Afghanistan with food justice rather than troops, we could move toward food sustainability in both countries. If some war funds paid for land restorations, jobs and social infrastructure needed to provide food sustainability, we would also free up monies for ending hunger here too.
While the US seems focused on troop surges in Afghanistan as the way to "win" the war, the UN seeks a food justice surge of humanitarian relief.
Sounds crazy? Waging food justice not war? The BBC has conducted 4 polls in Afghanistan since 2005, and this latest poll provides a virtual roadmap of what issues (e.g., food justice, infrastructure, jobs, water availability, electricity, medical care) the US could address to improve life in Afghanistan while also eliminating or neutralizing the Taliban. The Afghans do not support the Taliban, but some are compelled by the twin economic and food crises to work with the Taliban by farming drug crops. We could eliminate that need.
Poll results indicate that the "biggest danger" in Afghanistan now is a "bleak picture" of falling expectations and shortening patience. This week’s poll (pdf file) shows that for the first time since the polling started in 2004 that significantly fewer people (40%) believe that "things in Afghanistan today are going in the right direction" while a similar percentage of 38% believe the country is headed in the wrong direction. The 2009 poll also ranks the two biggest problems facing Afghanistan as economy/poverty/jobs (26%) and security/warlords/attacks/violence (24%). The remaining problems, aside from the Taliban (8%), are similar to our own domestic issues (e.g., high prices, jobs, corruption, education and terrorism).
A little over 1/3 or 35% responded that food availability was somewhat bad or very bad. Food justice is one matter that links both of the primary problems of economic conditions and violence.
Hunger can "kill more people in Afghanistan than the Taliban." Indeed, 40,000 people die each year in Afghanistan from hunger and poverty, not our bombs, the Taliban, or local violence. A UN Security Council report finds that hunger/poverty deaths are "25 times higher than the toll due to violence."
Since last year, the number of people needing food assistance has doubled to almost 9 million of the total population of over 32 million.
[T]he health of over a million young children and half a million women is at serious risk due to malnutrition. One out of every two Afghan children under five is stunted and 39 percent are underweight, the humanitarian agency says.
In a memo to US President Barack Obama, Oxfam has warned of the possibility of significant food shortages in 2009 that could "adversely affect public health and even spark displacement and unrest."
Providing food and economic justice is so important that in one of the most violent provinces, the governor is requesting "tractors and training, rather than troops." This governor wants to "create security through jobs, not tanks and artillery."
However, thus far the US has been focused on military solutions rather than life-sustaining solutions:
Much will depend on the new Obama administration’s plans for Afghanistan. Initial signs suggest an approach weighted to military solutions, with a reduced emphasis on development and "less ambitious" short-term goals. None of this adds up to an encouraging future for Afghanistan’s hungry millions.
Drought is one reason for decreased agricultural food production and increased prices that result in Afghan families spending an average 77% of income on food as "compared to 56 percent in 2005." While global food prices have increased, in 2008, Afghanistan harvested only 2/3 of its food requirements. The food crisis was enhanced when a call for global relief only yielded half the funding needed.
Environmental degradation has contributed significantly to decreased agricultural production and worsened drought conditions:
Environmental degradation is also a severe problem. War, uncontrolled grazing, pastureland encroachment and illegal logging have reduced vegetation, contributing to land degradation and a reduction in agricultural productivity. The loss of forest and grass cover has also worsened drought conditions.
If the US funded environmentally beneficial land restoration projects, it would assist the creation of sustainable food production that in the long-term would also eliminate or reduce the need for financial food aid that usually takes the form of shipping food products that don’t remedy the underlying problems that prevent sustainability.
While the US focuses on drugs and the evasive Taliban, part of the growing local violence in Afghanistan is armed thieves willing to shoot to steal flour. People are afraid because they "sense a growing hunger and desperation in the general population. While there have been no riots yet in Afghanistan over spiraling food prices, the economic pain and hunger are hitting the poor and unemployed, aid agency officials are warning. Teachers have threatened to strike and there have been some angry demonstrations."
Rising food prices, decreased agricultural production, war, no jobs, and poor wages leave families with few choices:
Hajji Hayatullah described how one customer came to his shop and asked the shopkeeper to load a sack of flour onto his bicycle. "Then he said: ‘Don’t ask me to pay. All my life I did not take bribes, I did not take anything from anyone, and now I am forced to take it without paying. My children have not eaten,’ " the shopkeeper recalled the man saying.
"He said, ‘I will return it if God gives me money,’ " he continued.
The episode was unusual because the man was a respectable, educated person and it is deeply shameful in Afghan culture to take something like that, the shopkeeper said. "I realized he had a real problem," he said.
As in the US, the hunger crisis requires immediate replenishment of our food banks. But, if we want to end hunger, we need to provide sustainable food justice, which requires addressing the food, environmental, economic, political and social issues that are intertwined with hunger.
Donate with a credit card here.
Donate other ways here.
Participating Diarists this weekend (all times Eastern):
3 p.m.: Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse
6 p.m.: Hardhat Democrat
9 p.m.: boatsie
Overnight: JellybearDemMom
Sunday, February 15, 2009
9 a.m.: blue jersey mom
12 noon: rb137
3 p.m.: Timroff
6 p.m.: Meteor Blades
9 p.m.: srkp23
The Food Bank of Central New York has a paypal button for easy donations! (h/t Hardhat Democrat and Asinus Asinum Fricat)