These three stories give some context and details on the darker realities behind the nice-sounding food drops over Afghanistan

Killer Food Drops

by Laura Flanders

Here's the half of the story that the media and the Bush team bring you: Under cover of darkness, U.S. food packets rained from the sky like manna
upon the hungriest parts of Afghanistan.

Here's the other half -- which requires some independent research and imagination: unguided crates crash to ground in the pitch black. Hungry
Afghans rush to gather them up. Too late. Another explosion, then another. Parents watch in horror as the brightly colored packets tempt their
children onto landmines.

Afghanistan Aid Called Propaganda

PARIS (AP) - Nobel Peace Prize winner Medecins Sans Frontieres condemned the humanitarian operation accompanying
the U.S.-led strikes on Afghanistan as "military propaganda" designed to justify the strikes.

In a statement, the French humanitarian group, known in English as Doctors Without Borders , said
the operation "isn't in any way a humanitarian aid operation, but more a military propaganda operation, destined to
make international opinion accept the U.S.-led military operation."

Medecins Sans Frontieres won the 1999 Nobel Peace Prize for its medical relief work in more than 80 countries. Like
many international aid groups, it suspended its work in Afghanistan shortly after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in the
United States.

Aid Agencies Reject 'Risky' US Air Drops

Plea for borders to be reopened after air strikes

by Jonathan Steele and Felicity Lawrence

The launch of military attacks on Afghanistan will worsen the humanitarian crisis in the country and plans for air drops of aid will be "virtually
useless" as an aid strategy, leading British aid agencies warned yesterday.

Instead America and Britain should assign clear corridors on the ground and ensure safe passage for aid to flow in and for refugees to return home
without any danger of being hit by air strikes, senior aid workers said.