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Poor Communication Undermines Efforts to Help Afghans
Wednesday, October 31, 2001
By Dwight Owen Schweitzer
Publisher
Jewish Star Times

Harking back to the days of the Raj, all it took to almost topple the British hold on India was to tell the devout Muslim Sepoy troops that the “new” cartridges they were being asked to bite the wrappers off of (ergo, “bite the bullet”) were impregnated with pig fat.

We drop thousands of food packages in Afghanistan and its government tells its people that the food is poisoned. If anyone needed to understand the implications of why such a regime needs to be replaced, that says it all. This, mind you, in a country barely able to sustain its population when times are good, and which has suffered the worst drought since Kipling wrote about the Raj. To suggest that literally tens of thousands of Afghans are starving to death is unfortunately not an understatement and the World Health Organization of the United Nations is overwhelmed in its relief efforts.
(More: Jewish Star Times News Source)
2001 © The Miami Herald.

Dan