Sir, - Aid organisations need security to get their work done. Delivering aid while ducking gunfire and trying not to detonate land-mines just isn't feasible. In Afghanistan, the war seems to be almost won, but the country is not secured - which means that humanitarian aid is still not getting through in sufficient quantities.
Apart from rooting out Bin Laden and members of his Al Qaeda terrorist network, and putting an end to the Taliban regime, another of the stated aims of the invasion force was to secure a decent future for the Afghan people.
Unfortunately we do not have the luxury of taking the long-term view. If the Afghan people are to have any sort of future they must first survive the present. Many of them will not, I fear, live to see a new Afghanistan without all the help that the West can offer them.
Before the aid agencies were obliged to evacuate in mid-September we were helping people who had exhausted their coping mechanisms. We can only assume that they have deteriorated greatly since the supply of aid was so prematurely cut off. The time has long since past for armies to be confronting each other while ignoring the needs of the civilian population.
Humanitarian organisations need protection to get aid to people in parts of Afghanistan that have been cut off for three months. - Yours etc.,
John O'Shea, GOAL, PO Box 19, Dun Laoghaire, Co Dublin.