Louis Lingg writes: "The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization has recently released a special report on the threat of famine in Afghanistan and the tightening of food supplies in neighboring countries.

An excerpt: A decade-long destructive war with the Soviet Union and the subsequent civil strife for nearly 13 years have devastated infrastructure in agriculture and other sectors of Afghanistan's economy.
The irrigation systems are in complete ruin, while agricultural services are virtually non-existent and farmers have little access to necessary agricultural input supplies. Thousands of hectares of
prime agricultural land have been taken out of production due mainly to lack of irrigation and the presence of millions of land mines. Many communities have been cut off from the rest of the
country due to the destruction of roads, bridges and other communication facilities. Fruit trees and forests, once a major source of foreign exchange, have virtually disappeared. Livestock
production, another major export item and source of food as well as farm power, has been severely reduced. During the past three years, the country has witnessed a devastating drought which
compounded the impact of years of conflict and brought a large section of the population to the brink of starvation. The 2001 cereal output, estimated at about 2 million tonnes, is about one-half
of the production in 1998."