Kathy Kelly - Salt and Terror in Afghanistan --- We looked at UN figures about hunger in Afghanistan which show malnutrition rates rising by 50% or more compared with 2012. The malnutrition ward at Helmand Province’s Bost Hospital has been admitting 200 children a month for severe, acute malnutrition – four times more than in January 2012. -- A recent New York Times article about the worsening hunger crisis described an encounter with a mother and child in an Afghan hospital: "In another bed is Fatima, less than a year old, who is so severely malnourished that her heart is failing, and the doctors expect that she will soon die unless her father is able to find money to take her to Kabul for surgery. The girl’s face bears a perpetual look of utter terror, and she rarely stops crying." --- As children grow, they need iodine to enable proper brain development. According to a UNICEF/GAIN report, "iodine deficiency is the most prevalent cause of brain damage worldwide. It is easily preventable, and through ongoing targeted interventions, can be eliminated." As recently as 2009 we learned that 70% of Afghan children faced an iodine deficiency. -- Universal Salt Iodization (USI) is recognized as a simple, safe and cost-effective measure in addressing iodine deficiency. The World Bank reports that it costs $.05 per child, per year. -- In 2012, the World Food Programme (WFP) and the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN) announced a four-year project which aimed to reach nearly half of Afghanistan’s population – 15 million Afghans – with fortified foods. Their strategy was to add vitamins and minerals such as iron, zinc, folic acid, Vitamin B-12 and Vitamin A to wheat flour, vegetable oil and ghee, and also to fortify salt with iodine. The project costs 6.4 million dollars. -- The sums of money required to fund delivery of iodine and fortified foods to malnourished Afghan children should be compared, I believe, to the sums of money that the Pentagon’s insatiable appetite for war-making has required of U.S. people. -- The price tag for supplying iodized salt to one child for one year is 5 cents. --- The cost of maintaining one U.S. soldier has recently risen to 2.1. million dollars per year. The amount of money spent to keep three U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan in 2014 could almost cover the cost of a four year program to deliver fortified foods to 15 million Afghan people. -- Maj. Gen. Kurt J. Stein, who is overseeing the drawdown of U.S. troops from Afghanistan, has referred to the operation as "the largest retrograde mission in history." The mission will cost as much as $6 billion. -- Over the past decade, spin doctors for U.S. military spending have suggested that Afghanistan needs the U.S. troop presence and U.S. non-military spending to protect the interests of women and children. -- It’s true that non-military aid to Afghanistan, sent by the U.S. since 2002, now approaches 100 billion dollars. -- Several articles on Afghanistan’s worsening hunger crisis, appearing in the Western press, prompt readers to ask how Afghanistan could be receiving vast sums of non-military aid and yet still struggle with severe acute malnourishment among children under age five. ---However, a 2013 quarterly report to Congress submitted by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan shows that, of the nearly $100 billion spent on wartime reconstruction, 97 billion has been spent on counter-narcotics, security, "governance/development" and "oversight and operations." No more than $3 billion, a hundred dollars per Afghan person, were used for "humanitarian" projects – to help keep thirty million Afghans alive through twelve years of U.S. war and occupation. - More, at: http://original.antiwar.com/kelly/2014/02/05/salt-and-terror-in-afghanistan/