CARE staff in Afghanistan have confirmed that our aid convoy, sent into the country earlier this month from Pakistan, successfully delivered food to approximately 2,000 families in and around Kabul and the province of Logar.

The convoy and its 100 metric tons of wheat provided immediate relief for poor Afghans suffering the effects of drought and conflict. Even more importantly, it tested the logistics of bigger emergency deliveries to come.

"The success of this operation means that we can now implement plans to send larger convoys carrying not only food, but other items aimed at helping the people survive the approaching winter," says Paul Barker, who heads up CARE's Afghanistan operations from Pakistan. "After three years of drought, the rural communities in particular are in a very precarious situation. Add to that more than one million people who have fled cities due to the recent military activity, and there is an enormous burden on the limited food stocks of the rural people."

These displaced people will be the primary focus of CARE's next relief effort. In addition, thousands of women-headed households in Kabul, whose occupants can neither work nor leave the city, will be among the first to receive CARE's assistance.

Despite the current conflict, CARE has continued to provide clean drinking water to a quarter-million residents of Kabul, food to 10,000 widow-headed households, and education to more than 20,000 children in CARE-supported schools.

These programs are just part of CARE's decades-long commitment to helping the innocent people of Afghanistan find lasting solutions to poverty. With your support, that commitment can continue -- and with it, the hope for a more peaceful and secure future.