To the Honorable

I am writing you as a constituent to urge you to support full US funding for
the United Nation's humanitarian relief efforts in Afghanistan and among the
Afghan refugees.  Afghanistan is facing an immense humanitarian crisis.
Because of four years of drought, decades of war, the destruction of irrigation
systems and the mining of large areas of agricultural land by the Soviet army,
the country cannot feed itself.  Millions of Afghans already rely on the United
Nations World Food Program to survive.  Things are only growing worse, as
people try to flee the country before the US attacks the Taliban, and
neighboring countries, normally sources of food, seal their borders.  The UN is
asking for $584 million in food aid, to stave off immediate famine.  The United
States has currently allocated only $4 million towards this effort.  Surely,
when we are currently (and rightly) spending tens of billions of dollars on all
aspects of the crisis, we can afford to pay for the entire effort, and more
besides.

The Afghan people allied themselves with us in the struggle against Soviet
aggression.  Over a million of them died in that war; at least five million
more were driven from their homes as refugees; their infrastructure,
government, society and even culture were destroyed.  To save them now from
starvation is the least that we owe them, and there can hardly be a more
convincing way to show that we know they are not our enemies.

	Sincerely,