Not having read this new report yet--I am familiar with all the other reports that have come out in the past few months, and there have been several--I would like to stress that we do fully recognize that we have a problem with providing the poorest Afghans with the basics they need for survival. Compounding this issue over the past year or two on the one hand was the very severe winter Afghanistan underwent this year, which caused many deaths and also some amount of resettlement of people.
We also have been faced, as have many other countries around the world, with acute food price increases as a result of the global conditions that exist. The prices of the most basic commodities have gone up incredibly over the past few months. We are trying, and continue to try very hard, to bring in help from the outside. We are actually in the process of purchasing and have purchased millions of dollars' worth of foodstuffs to offset the increasing prices. Countries such as yours have contributed, and millions of dollars' worth of food help has been promised to Afghanistan and is coming to Afghanistan in many different ways. We hope this particular issue, the issue of food--flour, sugar, tea, and rice, the basic staples of the Afghan people--which affects Afghans very directly, can be resolved soon. There's a very concerted effort by our government and by our friends and by our neighbours as well, who are in a better situation, to provide us with foodstuffs.
Overall, there are some elements in Afghanistan who are, or who may feel they are, economically marginalized, and they may also become recruits for insurgents and others. That is one aspect of the armed conflict we're facing: those who have not found a job, or those who may find a job but one that pays such a low salary that somebody else comes along and offers three, four, five times more money to them and they accept it because of dire circumstances.
There are those who have been, and continue to be, affiliated or associated with the drug business also. The farmers, as I mentioned in my presentation, are squeezed from several sides. You have the guy who goes to them and says, “I'm going to lend you money, and you have to cultivate poppies; otherwise I'm going to burn down your home and I'm going to take your children away”. And they do this at gunpoint. So they make them beholden to this lender who is affiliated with the mafia. He gives him the crop, and there starts the cycle of being dependent on the mafia for his survival. The next step is, “You give this to me and I give you a percentage”, and that percentage, of course, ends up being the least amount that anyone could make.
Then we come as the government and say we're going to eradicate, or we're going to spray, or we're going to make life difficult for them, and at times we come and say we have solutions. We have alternatives for them. We have other crops that they can grow, or they can have other means of livelihood. Overall that also contributes to marginalization. So if you take some time and study this ANDS, you'll see that it is addressing all of the pillars that need to be put together. They need to work with each other in order to create a sustainable economy that would address some of the issues that you brought up.