The Spark

the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist

“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx

U.S. Shows How to Starve Millions While Dropping Food Rations

Nov 5, 2001

A “problem” has turned up with the so-called “humanitarian daily rations” dropped from U.S. planes over Afghanistan. They are wrapped in yellow plastic, the same color that U.S. “anti-personnel” bomblets are painted. These “anti-personnel” bomblets, dropped by the thousands over Afghanistan, sometimes fail to explode when dropped. It appears this has led to some “confusion”–the “bomblets” can be mistaken for food, only to explode when picked up.

Someone who doesn’t trust the U.S. government might skeptically wonder if there was some method to this madness.

In any case, it’s certainly clear there’s nothing “humanitarian” about these so-called “humanitarian food drops.” Even the U.S. government admits that only about 20 to 40 tons of food are being dropped each day. Before the U.S. bombing began, about 500 tons of food was being shipped into Afghanistan each day. It fed about three and a half million refugees. The bombing cut off all this land shipment of food, while doubling the number of refugees to over 7 million.

Yellow, green or purple–it would make no difference. These food drops aren’t aimed at feeding a starving Afghani population. They are aimed at what the U.S. government hopes is a gullible U.S. population.