"Every year the mountainous Hazarajat area faces food shortages but reports emerging from the west of the region at the moment speak of possible famine this winter. The Hazarajat is controlled by the anti-Taleban alliance and the Taleban have imposed a tight blockade for nearly four months to prevent food coming in from their territory to the south. Meanwhile, the United Nations aid agency the World Food Programme has been unable to move wheat supplies into the Hazarajat from northern Afghanistan. The UN's warehouses in the north have been completely looted by fighters there from the anti-Taleban alliance. The Hazarajat's problems have been compounded by frost and early snow which have badly affected the local harvests in numerous places. Reliable sources say that tens of thousands of people may starve to death this winter in three districts alone. A UN spokesman said there was a potential major emergency in the offing. There are just a few weeks left to get food to the most isolated parts of the Hazarajat before snow shuts mountain passes. The UN has repeatedly appealed to the Taleban to lift their blockade of the region on humanitarian grounds. But a senior Taleban spokesman has argued that the blockade is justified. He claimed that supplies going into the area would be consumed by military forces there which are fighting the Taleban but the Hazarajat authorities who have expressed grave concern about the situation insist that the Taleban blockade is hitting ordinary people who have no connection with the fighting."