At least a million Afghans face starvation if the World Food Program cannot return evacuated staff to the country and resume its normal operations there, a spokesman said today.
The WFP still has three weeks' worth of supplies in warehouses in Afghan cities, but it could not distribute it to rural areas hard hit by a severe drought and the crisis over Osama bin Laden, WFP spokesman Mr Khaled Mansour said today.
Although Afghanistan desperately needs foodstuffs, there was no reason for WFP to send in more aid if it could not get it to the millions most threatened by the famine, he said.
"We have pre-famine conditions," he said. "If for a long period of time we cannot have access to Afghanistan... then I'm afraid people may starve. About one million people would be most threatened."
Like all other United Nations agencies, the WFP had to evacuate its staff from Afghanistan hastily last week as the United States threatened to raid Afghanistan to punish it for harboring Saudi-born dissident Osama bin Laden.
Washington considers bin Laden the prime suspect in last week's aerial suicide attacks on US cities that left 6,000 people dead or missing.
Food prices were rising in Afghanistan due to stockpiling, adding more misery to a desperate situation, he added.
"The last time I was there, I saw people eating locusts, eating animal fodder, eating grass," he recalled.
"People are just trying to live by any means available. Due to the drought three years ago, they spent their savings. The year after, they sold their houses. There are families in the north that sold their daughters into marriage as young as nine, so it's becoming really, really difficult" he added.
Mr Yusuf Hassan, spokesman for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), said 200,000 Afghans had fled their homes for the countryside or neighboring Pakistan.
"The UNHCR is preparing for the influx of 100,000 Afghans, some of them are already in Pakistan," Mr Hassan said.
UNHCR says 15,000 Afghans have already entered Pakistan since September 12th and thousands are waiting at the border to enter.