Mediaboss Marketing

By Kay Johnson

KABUL Tue Oct 14, 2014 9:38am EDT

An Afghan worker rests after unloading sacks of wheat which will be distributed to Afghan widows for their monthly rations from the World Food Program (WFP) in Kabul October 26, 2010.

Credit: Reuters/Omar Sobhani

KABUL (Reuters) - Funding shortfalls have forced the World Food Program to cut rations for up to 1 million people in Afghanistan, a WFP official said, an early sign that aid money may dwindle as the international combat mission winds down.

The U.N. food assistance agency, which runs on donations from member countries, faces a gap of about $30 million for its program in Afghanistan, country director Claude Jibidar told Reuters in an interview.

"We have had to cut down the rations of the people we are assisting, just so that we can buy some time, so we dont stop altogether," Jibidar said.

He said the cuts, to 1,500 calories a day from 2,100, would affect up to 1 million people, many of whom have had to flee their homes because of the escalating war between the Taliban insurgency and the Western-backed Afghan government.

For those displaced by the war, the prospect that food aid could stop is grim.

"If the food rations get stopped, we will die of hunger," said Bibi Fatima, an elderly woman who lives with eight family members in a mud hut on Kabul's eastern outskirts.

More:
U.N. agency to cut food rations for one million Afghans ...