Thousands of hungry displaced families in Afghanistan are fighting a new menace as the deadly winter approaches.
Already contending with the hardline Taliban forces and nightly bombing raids, the starving people of the war-torn country are seeing food supplies dropped by US military planes being seized by the strong and healthy and sold in markets.
International aid agencies are also experiencing growing difficulties operating in the region, with increasing reports of looting of desperately needed food aid and supplies.
Aid workers working inside Afghanistan reported yesterday that the bright-yellow US food packets, filled with beans, peanut butter and crackers, are being hawked openly after being gathered up by enterprising men.
"We know from experience the problem of untargeted airdrops going into just anybody's hands," said Mr Nick Roseveare of Oxfam International. "The people who are going to be able to get to it aren't likely to be the weak, sick and elderly - but the young and able-bodied, who can run out and get it."
He said the 275,000 food packets that have been dropped over Afghanistan in recent weeks were just "a drop in the ocean".
On Wednesday the Taliban militia seized at gunpoint two World Food Programme warehouses containing enough wheat to feed more than 400,000 people for a month.
The Taliban gave back one warehouse yesterday and everything seemed intact, according to Mr Michael Huggins, the WFP spokesman in Peshawar.
The seized warehouses together contained nearly 7,000 metric tons of wheat, more than half the WFP's stockpile in Afghanistan.
The food was intended for desperate Afghan civilians, two million of whom need donated food to get them through the coming winter.
It also emerged yesterday that armed men ransacked compounds belonging to MΘdecins Sans FrontiΦres (MSF) in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif and in Kandahar in the south.
The looting has cut vital assistance to destitute Afghans in six provinces, according to the group's international president, Mr Morten Rostrup.
"We had two of our major compounds looted by groups of armed men and after that we have not been able to run any of our medical programmes," said Mr Rostrup.
"It is unacceptable now because people in six provinces, they are left without any medical aid and any aid for malnourished children. Stopping these programmes for these people is for us a disastrous situation," Mr Rostrup said.
He appealed to the authorities in Afghanistan to improve the law and order situation, which appears to be breaking down after 12 days of relentless US air-strikes on Taliban positions.
While MSF does not know who attacked its offices, several UN organisations have accused the Taliban or armed groups of Arab fighters of looting offices and stealing vehicles in the last few days.
MSF withdrew its international staff from Afghanistan shortly after the September 11th attacks on the United States amid security concerns, but Afghan staff were still working in the capital, Kabul, and in Herat in the west.
Several international aid organisations, including Oxfam, Action Aid, Christian Aid and Islamic Relief, have appealed for an immediate pause in the US-led bombing campaign, now in its 11th day, to rush in food before the winter sets in next month.