United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is cited as a source warning of the scale of Afghanistan’s food emergency in the period following the September 11 attacks. In Noam Chomsky’s account, the warning sits beside a practical contradiction: while public attention turned to food aid, airstrikes interrupted the established routes on which large-scale relief depended, and refugees faced closed borders as hunger deepened.

Warnings of famine

A spokesperson for the UNHCR reported that 7.5 million Afghans were short of food and on the brink of famine. The estimate conveyed the scale of need at a time when the United Nations had also put the number at seven to eight million people at risk of hunger. Chomsky sets the UNHCR’s warning against the fact that about six million Afghans were surviving on food distributed by the United Nations, underscoring how many lives depended on continuing aid rather than a sudden, improvised response.

The warning was not limited to people inside Afghanistan. The book notes that three and a half million Afghans had taken refuge in camps abroad, many having arrived shortly before borders closed. Supplies were being sent to camps outside the country, but those who remained inside faced an increasingly uncertain prospect. The figures describe an emergency extending across borders, with displacement and restricted movement shaping who could reach assistance.

Relief interrupted by airstrikes

The World Food Programme had sent hundreds of tonnes of food to Afghanistan in early October, but estimated that the shipment met no more than 15 percent of the country’s needs. Its work was already under strain: international teams had withdrawn, and deliveries had been interrupted for three weeks after the attacks. Following the airstrikes that began on October 7, the programme halted its convoys and local food distributions.

The UNHCR’s famine warning therefore appeared alongside reports that the principal means of moving large quantities of food—World Food Programme trucks—had been disrupted. Aid organizations preferred delivery by road to food drops, which they regarded as an inferior means of reaching people in need. Chomsky emphasizes the resulting mismatch: publicized air drops could not make up for the interruption of regular supply routes, and the disruption threatened to reduce food reaching an already hungry population.

Refugees and the limits of aid

The account also describes refugees facing closed borders, with only a few able to escape through isolated mountain passes. How many had already died could not be determined; those visible in camps across the border were, in the book’s framing, among the comparatively fortunate because they had managed to get out. With winter approaching, the circumstances of those unable to cross remained uncertain.

Chomsky places the UNHCR’s warning within a broader criticism of the relationship between military action and humanitarian relief. He contrasts the urgency of the famine estimates with the interruption of aid and questions whether announced assistance would be large enough to meet the need. In this presentation, the UNHCR is a humanitarian voice recording the emergency’s scale, while the surrounding account stresses that the delivery of food—not merely the announcement of aid—was essential to addressing it.