War

Returning to the war, the airstrikes quickly turned cities into "ghost towns," the press reported, with electrical power and water supplies destroyed, a form of biological warfare. The UN reported that 70% of the population had fled Kandahar and Herat within two weeks, mostly to the countryside, where in ordinary times 10-20 people, many of them children, are killed or crippled daily by land mines. Those conditions became much worse as a result of the bombing. UN mine-clearing operations were halted, and unexploded U.S. ordnance, particularly the lethal bomblets scattered by cluster bombs, add to the torture, and are much harder to clear.10