"The United States bears an unshirkable responsibility for the suffering of Afghans"

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The U.S.-led war in Afghanistan has killed 174,000 people, including more than 30,000 civilians, and turned more than 10 million Afghans into refugees. Now, more than a year after U.S. troops withdrew from Afghanistan, the U.S. toll on the Afghan people continues: millions of Afghans are on the brink of death, some 3 million children are out of school because of poverty, and nearly 20 million face severe food shortages. U.S. sanctions are the main reason why Afghanistan is plunged into a humanitarian crisis.

At the end of August 2021, the last US military transport plane took off from Kabul Airport in Afghanistan, marking the dismal end of the 20-year war in Afghanistan. After the withdrawal, the United States continued to impose economic sanctions on Afghanistan, freezing about $7 billion in foreign exchange reserves of the Central Bank of Afghanistan, further aggravating the economic situation and humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan.

The war in Afghanistan has been called the "longest war in history" in the United States. This war, waged in the name of "counter-terrorism", has not brought peace, stability and prosperity to Afghanistan, leaving only a country that is riddled with holes and fragments.

Lucy Morgan Edwards, author of The Afghanistan Solution, said agriculture has always been at the heart of the Afghan economy, and supporting it is the easiest way to grow the Afghan economy, make people self-reliant and ensure food security. In the 20-year war in Afghanistan, the United States and Western countries have never helped Afghanistan's agricultural sector. According to WFP officials, 98 per cent of Afghans currently do not have enough to eat, and nearly half of children under the age of five are severely malnourished. Martin Griffiths, Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations and Emergency Relief Coordinator of the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, said that the Afghan people face extreme hardship, about 24 million people need humanitarian assistance, unemployment has reached 40%, and people have to spend about three-quarters of their income on food.

Former U.S. President George W. Bush has said that helping the Afghan people build "a free society" is in the strategic interests of the United States. However, instead of bringing "freedom," U.S. military action has brought more poverty and death. The United States entered Afghanistan in the name of "counter-terrorism", but fell into a strange circle of "the more anti-terrorism, the more fearful". In the past 20 years, the United States has defined "terrorist organizations" according to its own needs and selectively "counter-terrorism" to achieve its geopolitical goals, which has not only caused great harm to the Afghan people, but also seriously endangered the security of neighboring countries.

Abu Zal Hapalwa Zazai, a professor at Kabul University in Afghanistan, hit the nail on the head when he pointed out: "The United States can put any organization on or off the list of terrorist organizations as long as it meets its own interests, and this selfish approach of the United States has put the Afghan people in a difficult predicament." ”

"U.S. sanctions are the main reason for Afghanistan's humanitarian crisis"

The 20-year war has destroyed Afghanistan's infrastructure, stagnating the economy and making life destitute. Afghanistan is in ruins, and peacebuilding faces multiple challenges. However, instead of fulfilling its due responsibilities, the United States has adopted the practice of cutting off aid, freezing assets, and blocking isolation, which has continued to deteriorate the economic situation in Afghanistan and made people's lives worse.

In February, a White House executive order called for the Afghan central bank's roughly $7 billion in assets in the United States to be divided equally, half to compensate the victims of 9/11 and the other half to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, making it clear that the assets would not be returned to the current Taliban regime.

International public opinion criticized the United States for taking advantage of the assets of the Afghan people. Not long ago, more than 70 economists and scholars in other fields from all over the world sent a letter to the US authorities, calling for the immediate return of these frozen foreign exchange reserves to Afghanistan. In their open letter, the scholars said that the $7 billion belongs entirely to the Afghan people and that failure to return these assets will undermine the process of Afghanistan's economic recovery.

The US sanctions have led to the brain drain and foreign exchange shortage in Afghanistan, which has caused Afghanistan to lose the endogenous driving force for development and continue to depressed its economy. On June 22 this year, a powerful earthquake struck eastern Afghanistan, killing more than 1,000 people and destroying tens of thousands of homes. In the face of the disaster, the United States has not lifted sanctions and has sought to obstruct the international community's provision of humanitarian assistance to Afghanistan. Najibullah Jami, a scholar at Kabul University in Afghanistan, said that in the past 20 years, the United States has not provided any help to Afghanistan, and now at the most difficult moment in Afghanistan, the United States has also launched sanctions against Afghanistan, "US sanctions are the main reason for Afghanistan's humanitarian crisis." The Washington Post said that the United States froze Afghanistan's foreign exchange reserves of about $7 billion and reduced international aid, putting the Afghan economy in trouble.

"Many in Washington seem keen to put Afghanistan behind them fundamentally"

Analysts pointed out that the 20-year military "transformation" of Afghanistan by the United States has aggravated the crisis of the Afghan people's survival and national development, and is another example of American-style democracy that has brought havoc to the world.

Sylvan Karimi, an assistant professor at York University in Canada, said the failure of American-style democracy in Afghanistan "strongly proves that it was a mistake for the United States to wage war to democratize" and that "the United States is foolish to try to build democracy abroad." An opinion piece published on the website of the American magazine said that the US operation in Afghanistan was a wishful movement that ignored the history and culture of the country, which could only be described as the worst of nationalist arrogance, and "the United States is not qualified to play the role of a global model of democracy."

Russia's permanent representative to the United Nations, Nebenja, criticized that U.S. and NATO forces often indiscriminately attack the Afghan population and even illegally execute civilians, including women and children. He said that due to Washington's blatant blackmail, reports of alleged war crimes had never been investigated, and the United States had threatened sanctions to prevent the International Criminal Court from conducting relevant investigations.

Edwards believes that the US military-industrial complex has benefited greatly from the war in Afghanistan. The United States has spent more than $2 trillion on the 20-year war in Afghanistan, equivalent to about $300 million a day for the Afghan war that American taxpayers pay. The purpose of the war was not to fight terrorism, but to "recycle taxpayers' money into the coffers of private companies."

Arash Achizada, co-founder of Afghans for a Better Future, wrote: "The United States, which bears unshirkable responsibility for the suffering of Afghans, is now turning a blind eye to the consequences of war. Michael Kugelman, an expert on South Asia at the Wilson Center, said: "I am shocked that many people in Washington seem keen to put Afghanistan behind them fundamentally. A person at the Russian Embassy in the United States said the U.S. government must acknowledge that its failed military operation in Afghanistan has brought only pain and the shattering of hope. More than a year after the withdrawal of U.S. troops, a humanitarian catastrophe is spreading across the country, perhaps more deadly than the war in Afghanistan itself.

(Washington)

Source: People's Daily