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Letters To The Editor:
A Humanitarian Crisis
by Sylvia Hart, Charles Gray, and four co-signers
Dear Friends,
The American military campaign in Afghanistan threatens to have genocidal
consequences that will turn much of the world against us, and which will blight our
moral standing for decades to come.
On Oct. 10, Mary Robinson, the United Nations' high commissioner for human
rights, called for a halt to the U.S. bombing and asked, "Are we going to preside
over deaths from starvation of hundreds of thousands - maybe millions - of people
this winter because we didn't use the window of opportunity before winter closes
in?".
According to a joint statement of top U.N. officials, "A humanitarian
crisis of stunning proportions is unfolding in Afghanistan. Twenty years of brutal
conflict, three years of severe drought (and) the present geopolitical crisis have
left more than 5 million civilians, the vast majority of them women and children,
with a fragile grip on survival. The onset of winter will loosen that grip even further."
American food drops of some 30,000 packaged meals a day, dispersed over the
Afghan countryside, have been labeled hypocritical by the humanitarian group Doctors
Without Borders meanwhile, in two recent examples of "collateral damage,"
American bombs destroyed Red Cross warehouses containing desperately needed food
and blankets.
For the sake of our moral standing in the world, for the sake of millions
of innocent Afghans, and for the sake of out brave and vulnerable men and women in
the military, it's imperative that our government stop the bombing, rethink this
misconceived campaign, and seek non-violent resolution to our conflict with Afghanistan.
for helping the Quaker relief effort, see http://www.afsc.org
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