KABUL, Afghanistan — Standing on the side of a mud-crusted street by a sewage canal, Shafiullah heaved a 110-pound bag of flour into the trunk of his battered Toyota Corolla and sighed. Beside him, a shambolic queue of residents of this once-affluent neighborhood, all waiting for their monthly U.N.-supplied assistance package, stretched to the end of the block and around two corners, then wrapped around the corner twice more, a physical representation of the five-hour wait Shafiullah had just finished.
"This is like begging. Sometimes you wait all day for this bag of flour," the former member of Afghanistan's vanquished U.S.-backed army said bitterly. The aid package will last him, his wife, his sister and his mother for a month, he said; after that, he doesn't know what he'll do.
"Before, I made enough money I could help other poor people," said Shafiullah, 27, who gave only his first name for privacy reasons. "Now I'm the one who needs help."
