Thousands of Afghans face cold, hungry winter as aid goes missing --- (Reuters) - Thousands of homeless Afghans are huddling on the sides of freezing roads this winter with little shelter and nothing to eat, not far from warehouses stuffed with food. -- The government's inability to help - through mismanagement, corruption, or factors beyond its control - threatens the future of a united Afghanistan after an April presidential election and the withdrawal of foreign combat troops by the end of this year. -- It also leaves poor Afghans open to more exploitation and suffering, and makes them ideal recruits for insurgents. -- "Warlords are coming at night, asking us for sheep and chickens. We are poor, we cannot afford this," said Ghollam Hassan, part of a cluster of people who have been living for weeks by the side of a road in Herat, one of Afghanistan's few relatively prosperous provinces near the border with Iran. -- "I hope the government gives us shelter, tents to protect the children from the cold and snow." -- The taskforce meant to respond to emergencies has failed to distribute supplies and, in some provinces, money to transport it has gone missing. Elsewhere, warehouses have been emptied without Kabul's knowledge, Afghan and U.N. officials say. -- So thousands of desperate people have abandoned their homes in dangerous provinces and flocked to Herat, many of them with just a blanket for shelter from Afghanistan's harsh winter. -- The crisis became so dire that the United Nations and international aid agencies stepped in with emergency provisions, but there is not enough to go around. --- Government stocks, mostly paid for with the billions of dollars of foreign aid that have poured into Afghanistan, should have been distributed by the Afghanistan National Disaster Management Authority (ANDMA), a government taskforce. -- But precious little has gone out because thousands of tonnes of supplies are missing or are stuck in warehouses. -- "There have been significant delays," Bo Schack, the head of the U.N. refugee agency in Afghanistan, told Reuters. -- "I have neither an excuse nor a reason for why this has not been distributed yet." -- Mohammad Aslam Sayas, deputy ANDMA director, acknowledged there was a problem with distributing aid across Afghanistan, but denied it was because of graft in one of the world's poorest and most corrupt countries. -- "It is a point of concern, because if there is a natural disaster and we need food, there is no food left," he said. - More, Jessica Donati and Mirwais Harooni, at: http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/01/17/us-afghanistan-displaced-idUSBREA0G1K220140117