Ever since the terrorist attacks on NYC and the almost immediate announcement of military reprisals on Afghanistan, I have felt utterly dejected. I'm not the only one - many people feel the same.

When 50,000 of us marched through London, it felt great. But the media deliberately underestimated our numbers, claimed we were a peculiar alliance of 'anarchist rioters' and 'Islamic fundamentalists, and we were castigated by Robin Cook for being a bunch of hardcore militants, out of touch with the rest of the world. Clare Short went on to dismiss the concerns of aid agencies as 'unreal and emotional' after they pointed out that food was running out in Afghanistan as the country approaches another bitterly cold winter and that bombing must stop. All the energy I gained from the demo seemed to dissipate.

I wrote (politely) five times to my MP, Sir Alan Haselhurst, who is Deputy Speaker of the House of Commons. The first four times, he sent me postcards telling me he had 'noted the contents' of my letters. The fifth time, he told me that I was no better than a Nazi appeaser. Quote: 'What I infer from your line of argument is that because the Treaty of Versailles in 1919 was fundamentally flawed, we should not have waged total war on the Nazi menance to which it gave rise. Perhaps you would have advocated appeasement then on the grounds that the developed half of the world was doing insufficient to address the needs of the poor and oppressed'. This was also an argument put in a response to one of my two letters to the local press.

Basically, it implies that the government will go on to destroy millions of lives in Afghanistan, starve thousands to death, bring Pakistan to the brink of civil war, increase repression of dissidents in China and Central Asia and spark massive unrest across the Islamic world - for the sake of catching just one man. They aren't even willing to countenance negotiations with the Taliban or find any peace settlement. Moreover, their attempts to assist refugees are pathetic - thousands of Afghanis are stuck on the borders, and tens of thousands are living in tents without sanitation, water, adequate shelter and sometimes without food. Blair and Bush don't care if these people die. And then there's that insulting token of yellow food parcels thrown out of aeroplanes. It makes me sick.

I've never really had much faith in this country's political system, but the wanton destruction of Afghanistan paid by the taxes on my wages every week is too much to bear. They aren't listening to us, they won't stop their terrible military actions and we're left feeling defeated and alienated.

Time is running out for Afghanistan. There's only two or three weeks left until the snows fall and already rural people are digging up roots and grass to eat. They will all starve within a month from now. I just don't know what to do. Protest seems so pointless.