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American planes drop another 70,000 food rations over Afghanistan Fair use for educational purposes only!

The Associated Press, 10/22/01 10:53 AM

BERLIN (AP) -- American cargo jets dropped 70,000 food packets over Afghanistan overnight, continuing a U.S. effort to get aid to civilians while military targets are attacked, an Air Force spokesman said Monday.

The mission involving four C-17 planes brought the total number of rations dropped to about 713,000 since the start of the operation, which coincided with the start of U.S. airstrikes, said Master Sgt. Randy Mitchell, a spokesman for U.S. Air Force Europe at Ramstein Air Base in Germany.

The packets contain foods such as barley stew, rice, shortbread cookies and peanut butter providing at least 2,200 calories, which are dropped out of boxes from the back of the cargo planes.

Copyright 2001 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

-- Swissrose (cellier3@mindspring.com), October 22, 2001

Answers

The packets contain foods such as barley stew, rice, shortbread cookies and peanut butter providing at least 2,200 calories, which are dropped out of boxes from the back of the cargo planes

Despite the widespread claims, by people and media that know better, that the packets supply only ONE meal, they are designed to be a whole days food, or more...i.e. the caloric equivalent of 3-6 meals depending the age of the people. Anyone who knows anything about nutrition, knows that 1200 calories a day will suffice.

Also, beside the peanut butter which the Afghanis find repulsive, the is in keeping with their diet. The fact that, beside the drawings, that the printing on the outside is in English is a bit stupid. However, since most are illiterate anyway, it doesn't seem it should make much difference.

That said, the question of how much gets to what people, and where, is not completely answered. However, the sources that flatly say it does not do much good -- or even does harm -- are very questionable...people with their own anti-US agenda.

Has anyone asked themselves who does the video of the what some are doing or not doing with these food packets on the ground? It certainly is NOT western journalists, operating freely on their own.

Nothing comes out of Afghanistan but video staged, or created, by the Taliban.

I STILL see references in articles from the last two days to the US having only dropped 40,000 to 70,000 packets (total) when 500,000- 600,000 had already been dropped. Those that don't want to give ANY positive slant to ANY news about the US's efforts work very hard at keeping the DIS-information program going.

Also, these are not meant to be a substitute for food aid by the relief agencies, just to supplement them. The West -- meaning the US - - has arranged to get food convoys in through Iran which can get to through more territory that is not under fire, or more easily around that which is involved in the fighting, than the convoys form Pakistan.

(see below)

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Afghan Food Delivery to Transit Iran By ALI AKBAR DAREINI, Associated Press Writer

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) - Iran has agreed to allow the delivery of U.S. food aid through its territory to Afghanistan and the construction of a refugee camp on its soil near the border, relief officials said.

The United States and Iran have not had diplomatic relations since the 1979 Islamic revolution. But as Washington has been putting together an anti-terror coalition the past month, delicate communications have been passed between the two countries.

Marius de Gaay Fortman, a coordinator for the World Food Program, said 45,000 tons of American wheat will arrive in Iran in early November to be delivered to the Afghan people through Iran.

A U.S. ship delivering the wheat will not come to Iran, he said, but rather the supplies will be transferred to another ship provided by the agency in international or Pakistani waters.

Fortman told reporters that another 20,000 tons of wheat donated by the United States will arrive in Pakistan early November, and by December there will be a consignment of 100,000 tons of American wheat for Afghanistan through Iran and Pakistan.

Iran accepted U.S. relief for itself - delivered through international agencies - after destructive earthquakes in 1997 and 1990. This was the first time the government has accepted to open the way for U.S aid on route for Afghanistan. On Tuesday, a senior U.S. official said in Washington that Iran has conveyed to the United States through Swiss intermediaries that it would try to rescue any American military personnel it found in distress on its territory.

Tehran has also allowed refugee camps to be set up on its territory just along the border with Afghanistan in case of an influx of people fleeing the fighting, a Red Cross official said. Iran, already home to some 2 million Afghan refugees, has resisted accepting more in the current crisis.

Setting up the camps at the border will allow easy access to refugees and facilitate relief operations, Astrid Heiberg, president of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, told a news conference.

Heiberg said concern is growing that a large number of Afghans will head to the Iranian border as fighting escalates inside Afghanistan and winter approaches. She did not elaborate.

Iran's top decision-making body, the Supreme National Security Council, made the decision on the camps Wednesday after the Taliban refused to allow the camps in Afghanistan, Ahmad Ali Norbala, head of the Iran Red Crescent Society, said at the news conference.

International aid workers pulled out of Afghanistan after the Sept. 11 terror attacks in the United States, leaving local staffers to try to run the operations.

In Vienna, Austria, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, Ruud Lubbers, said Thursday that so far Afghans have not fled in high numbers into neighboring nations, rather they have been fleeing cities to hide in the countryside

But the commissioner is preparing for the worst case scenario of 1.5 million refugees as the crisis sharpens. So far, bout 50,000 Afghan refugees have arrived in Pakistan since Sept. 11.

http://dailynews.yahoo.com/htx/ap/20011018/wl/attacks_iran_1.html

-- Jackson Brown (Jackson_Brown@deja.com), October 22, 2001.