KEEP TROOPS SAFE BY FIGHTING AFGHAN FAMINE

Canada must immediately launch an emergency food program to relieve
the growing hunger crisis in southern Afghanistan, says the president
of an international development and security think-tank.

Canadian lawyer Norine MacDonald, the founding president of the Senlis
Council, told a news conference yesterday that a famine has started to
take shape in the cities and towns that neighbour Canada's military
base in Kandahar.

"Children are starving to death literally down the road from the
Canadian military base in Kandahar," said Ms. MacDonald, who has spent
the past year in southern Afghanistan and has helped document the rise
of refugee camps in Kandahar and in surrounding towns.

If the food crisis continues to go unaddressed, she warned, Canadian
soldiers will lose the hearts and minds campaign in
Afghanistan.

"We must send immediate food relief to Kandahar province," said Ms.
MacDonald, who has been the Senlis Council's lead field researcher in
Afghanistan since January 2005.

"If we do not do this out of a humanitarian response to a province we
took responsibility for, we should do this as part of a smart military
strategy. This is not a war than can be won through military means
alone."

There has been a dramatic deterioration in the security situation
around Kandahar during the past several months, she said. The Taliban
control many roads and have again instilled widespread fear among the
people.

"Kandahar is a complete war zone. The Taliban are winning the military
battle and the battle for hearts and minds among local Afghans."

The Senlis Council yesterday released a policy paper, Losing Hearts
and Minds in Afghanistan, that recommends Canada introduce a food aid
program as a central plank in a radical new strategy.

The Canadian mission, the report concluded, has focused too narrowly
on a military strategy and "has not tackled the root causes of the
current security crisis: extreme poverty, under-development and an
almost complete dependence on opium poppy cultivation."

Ms. MacDonald told reporters that the government's current policy is
potentially disastrous: "They're getting it fundamentally wrong and
the young Canadian men and women who are fighting there are paying the
first price. The Afghans are paying the second price. And if we don't
change our policies now, right now, this month, next month,
dramatically, we will suffer more losses and we will lose southern
Afghanistan."

Although the Senlis Council offers some of the only independent
analysis of the on-the-ground situation in southern Afghanistan, Prime
Minister Stephen Harper has so far refused to meet with Ms. MacDonald
and her colleagues. They have similarly been unable to convince any
cabinet ministers to sit down with them.

Ms. MacDonald does not want Canada to withdraw from Afghanistan, but
favours an increased Canadian commitment.

She called on the federal government to convene an emergency NATO
meeting to discuss a new hearts and minds campaign in Afghanistan --
one that moves away from the "antagonistic" U.S. policies of opium
crop eradication and aerial bombardment and focuses instead on
humanitarian aid.

"The longer we leave changing our approach, the more deaths and
injuries there will be, including for Canadian troops," she warned.

The current situation has made it easy for the Taliban to recruit
fighters from the refugee camps and from farm villages that have
suffered because of crop eradications. Many poppy crops have been
bulldozed in the region as part of the forced eradication policy
championed by the U.S.

"People feel abandoned by the Canadians and all internationals, who
they believed were there to help them," said Ms. MacDonald. "Canadian
troops in Kandahar are fighting the Taliban insurgency against a
backdrop of an increasingly hostile local population."

The Senlis Council wants Canada to help develop a market for the
production of "fair trade" Afghan opium for use in medicines, such as
morphine and codeine.

As the lead field researcher in Kandahar, Ms. MacDonald directs the
work of 50 colleagues, most of them Afghans. They interviewed
thousands of people in the region, she said, to develop their report.

"I'm particularly concerned about the situation in Kandahar because I
am a Canadian," she said. "I look at it through the eyes of a
researcher, but also through the eyes of a Canadian."

If she had relatives in the military, Ms. MacDonald added, she would
be very proud of their efforts, "but I would be very concerned about
the environment in which they're being asked to fight."

Since 2002, Canada has suffered 42 military and one civilian casualty
in Afghanistan. The vast majority -- about 80 per cent -- have
occurred this year. The Canadian government has committed troops to
the area until 2009.