Food arrives, but bandits make delivery dangerous

KABUL, Afghanistan -- Food supplies are rising as aid groups gear up for winter, but banditry on the roads is making it too dangerous to deliver help to many remote areas where millions of hungry Afghans are effectively cut off.

Sixty-nine trucks loaded with wheat rumbled into Kabul on Thursday, part of almost daily deliveries for the World Food Program. At one school, the U.N. refugee agency handed out blankets, sweaters and charcoal to some 2,500 impoverished people.

While many in the Afghan capital are hurting, the city's markets are full of food, aid is being distributed and hospitals are functioning.

The weather in Kabul and points south is above freezing for now, but snow and cold have already come to the mountainous north.

The most urgent problem is the rugged countryside. Of 6 million Afghans requiring food aid, 4 million are in the "hunger belt" that arcs across the north, including Af-ghanistan's most isolated pockets.

Even in quiet times, these areas are tough to reach. Winter snows have begun to block roads winding through the Hindu Kush mountains in the northeast, and many paths will soon be unpassable. Three years of drought have shriveled local food supplies. Two months of fighting has sent many fleeing their homes.

Rutted roads

Aid officials say the greatest single obstacle to delivering supplies is the lack of security on the rutted roads, where robbers and warlords are seizing supplies and preventing aid groups from moving freely.

The northern alliance, which has captured most of the country from the Taliban, has been unable to secure the roads. The bandits emerged almost immediately after the Taliban fled. Militia leaders, some loosely linked to the northern alliance, and others operating independently, are carving out patches of territory every day.

Even some cities are hard to reach. The World Food Program can't operate in Kandahar, the Taliban stronghold in the south.

The U.N. agency planned to return to Mazar-e-Sharif, the largest northern city, but put that effort on hold because of recent fighting and ongoing instability.

Even in Kabul, aid distribution is imperfect. Workers for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees went door-to-door in a Kabul neighborhood Wednesday, handing out cards to 400 needy families entitling them to pick up supplies at a school on Thursday.