Food crisis is brewing in Afghanistan
"We are not feeling safe," said Haji Hayatullah, one of the flour merchants, sitting on the floor of his shop with sacks of flour stacked around him. "We don't have security and we don't trust the government to provide it." The merchants got together and hired eight private security guards.
Yet their fears remain, not only about gunmen, but 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.
"Prices are a big problem for our people. People do not grow enough and so we rely on imports from Pakistan, and the prices are going up daily," Haji Hayatullah said. "It is very hard for the people, unemployment is the biggest problem, people are very poor.
"I fear if this continues, people will loot the market," he said.
"For millions of Afghans, the poorer segments of society, who spend up to 70 percent of their meager income on food, these food price rises put the basic necessities simply out of their reach," Banbury said.
Six million people in Afghanistan, out of a population of about 32 million, are already receiving food aid, and the World Food Program is gearing up to help more.
It has agreed with the government to reopen an assistance plan through bakeries for the urban poor, a program that it ran during the years of the Taliban government but discontinued after the American-led invasion in late 2001. The government is also asking for help in providing food aid to 172,000 teachers countrywide, some of whom are not coming to work because they cannot make ends meet. That alone is an indication that things are getting harder, he said.
"Every school we went to, in every classroom, the teachers were saying we need more salary or food," Banbury said.
"The people are dying of hunger," said a beggar, Sardar Muhammad, 80, squatting in a Kandahar flour shop. His two sons worked as day laborers in the market and they did not earn enough to feed the family, he said.
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