TODAY the Muslim world has completed the first week of the Islamic month of Ramadan, but there is little of the traditional joy which Ramadan brings, due to the current situation in Afghanistan.

Muslims are concerned that the carpet bombing by American bombers, with unseen victims, still continues when the Taliban authority in the country has all but evaporated.

Unfortunately, the bombing is forcing increasing numbers of the poor to flee to safety in Pakistan or simply camp in the desert without food, water and shelter, putting vulnerable groups at greater risk.

The other source of astonishment is the lack of interest on the part of the United Nations or other humanitarian organisations to attempt to save the Taliban fighters cornered in Kundz in Northern Afghanistan.

These remnants of the Taliban may have been misguided to join the Taliban in the first place, but a number were encouraged by America and governments backed by it, to go to Afghanistan to fight the Russian invaders in the 1980s.

All of them are unlikely to be the "demons" portrayed in the western media and are more likely to be adventure-seeking youngsters who do not deserve to be slaughtered by the new found friends of Messrs Bush and Blair.

For is it not part of the code of conduct of war that once the enemy has been defeated they are to be given protection from ill treatment?

From the sketchy accounts reaching the outside world it appears that these Taliban fighters will be very lucky to escape with their lives.

The continuous onslaught against some areas of Afghanistan, even ones free of the Taliban, was more than enough reason for Riasat Hussain and his friends in the "Stop the War" group to organise a coach load of people from High Wycombe to join thousands of others in London last Sunday in a "Stop the War" demonstration.

Unfortunately for the peacemongers the American and British war planners have other things on their minds than to worry about the casualties of war, as long as they are unseen, far away and not like us.

The demonstrators see the need for justice for those killed in America on September 11, but cannot accept the suffering of the poor Afghan people, who have been ravaged by decades of war, instability and years of drought.

One only hopes that the reconstruction of Afghanistan will start even before a political settlement. Just think how much the defeat of the Soviet Union in Afghanistan saved the west in terms of military expenditure.

It is now time to spend a fraction of that peace dividend to set up a "Marshall plan" for Afghanistan. Can the developed world use Afghanistan as a model for development where say the Americans, British, Japanese, German, French and others take on the responsibility to rebuild one part of the infrastructure of the country, from roads to housing, education to health, from developing appropriate land use and water resource management techniques to improving security for all, so that Afghanistan can become part of the 21st century, with viable alternatives to war and poppy cultivation? Muslims are praying for an end to their suffering and deliverance from terror of all kinds.