ABSTRACT
On 20 September 2001, nine days after the attack on the United States on 11 September, the World Food Programme issued a press brief 1 stating that Afghanistan was teetering on the brink of widespread famine with nearly a quarter of its people desperately short of food and food aid stocks running out fast. Millions of Afghans were said to have been displaced by 20 years of war, and a severe drought was then in its third year. This was seen to be a catastrophe since, it was argued, some 85 per cent of the population depended on agriculture for survival. Several early warning signs of famine were detected such as reduced food intake, soaring prices, decimated livestock populations and increasing numbers of destitute people. This narrative of famine was carried through into the emergency response after the Taliban had been toppled from power in November 2001, reinforced by reports that dramatized the condition of Afghanistan’s rural population (Lautze et al. 2002). Subsequent reports were to emphasize how Western intervention had averted a famine (US Department of State 2002).
