[Act-ma_discuss] Kathy Kelly: "Thank You for Hearing Our Afghan Pain"

Thu Feb 17 19:26:45 PST 2022

FEBRUARY 14, 2022

<https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/02/14/thank-you-for-heari
ng-our-afghan-pain/> "Thank You for Hearing Our Afghan Pain"

BY  <https://www.counterpunch.org/author/kathy-kelly/> KATHY
KELLY

https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/02/14/thank-you-for-hearin
g-our-afghan-pain/

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<https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/02/14/thank-you-for-heari
ng-our-afghan-pain/print/> 

During visits to Kabul, Afghanistan, over the past decade, I
particularly relished lingering over breakfasts on chilly
winter mornings with my young hosts who were on their winter
break from school. Seated on the floor, wearing coats and
hats and draped with blankets, we'd sip piping hot green tea
as we shared fresh, warm wheels of bread purchased from the
nearest baker.

But this winter, for desperate millions of Afghans, the
bread isn't there. The decades-long U.S. assault on
Afghanistan's people has now taken the vengeful form of
freezing their shattered, starving country's assets.

The U.S. confiscation of $9.4 billion in Afghanistan's
currency reserves has already plunged the country into an
economic and humanitarian crisis. On January 10, the Biden
Administration announced an Executive Order which will
allow 3.5 billion in frozen assets from Afghanistan's
central bank to be distributed for humanitarian assistance
in the country. But measures aiming to provide humanitarian
assistance will not address the reality of an economy on the
verge of collapse. If the Afghan Bank can't pay teachers,
health care workers and civil servants, those people won't
have money to buy food and if the farmers can't sell their
crops, they can't afford to cultivate the land.

With some 23 million people in extreme hunger and a million
children under age five in immediate danger of starvation,
the U.S. should unfreeze all of Afghanistan's Central Bank
assets.

After visiting Afghanistan late last year, Dominik
Stillhart, head of the International Committee of the Red
Cross, said he
<https://english.alarabiya.net/News/world/2021/11/23/-The-bo
ne-thin-children-elicit-gasps-of-horror-ICRC-chief-on-Afghan
istan-crisis-> felt livid over the collective punishment
being imposed on Afghans through the freezing of the
country's assets. Referring to
<https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2021/8/18/us-freezes-afgh
an-central-banks-assets-of-9-5bn> $9.5 billion dollars of
Afghan assets presently frozen by the United States, he
recently emphasized that economic sanctions "meant to punish
those in power in Kabul are instead freezing millions of
people across Afghanistan out of the basics they need to
survive." The myopic effort to punish the Taliban by
freezing Afghan assets has left the country on the brink of
starvation.

These $9.5 billion of frozen assets belong to the Afghan
people, including those going without income and farmers who
can no longer feed their livestock or cultivate their land.
This money belongs to people who are freezing and going
hungry, and who are being deprived of education and health
care while the Afghan economy collapses under the weight of
U.S. sanctions.

Recently, I received an email from a young friend in Kabul:

"Living conditions are very difficult for people who do not
have bread to eat and fuel to heat their homes," the young
friend wrote. "A child died from cold in a house near me,
and several families came to my house today to help them
with money. One of them cried and told me that they had not
eaten for forty-eight hours and that their two children were
unconscious from the cold and hunger. She had no money to
treat and feed them. I wanted to share my heartache with
you."

<https://progressives.house.gov/_cache/files/7/9/79c380ca-66
1d-4158-9a88-f3a67ca24cdd/0C4CB37A3A6799AA59E3FCF4E01FCF3F.1
2-20-21-afghanistan-humanitarian-crisis-letter-1-.pdf>
Forty-eight members of Congress have
<https://peacenews.info/node/10088/editorial-unfreeze-afghan
istan> written to U.S. President Joe Biden calling for the
unfreezing of Afghanistan's assets. "By denying
international reserves to Afghanistan's private
sector-including more than $7 billion belonging to
Afghanistan and deposited at the [U.S.] Federal Reserve-the
U.S. government is impacting the general population."

The Congressmembers added, "We fear, as aid groups do, that
maintaining this policy could cause more civilian deaths in
the coming year than were lost in twenty years of war."

For two decades, the United States' support for puppet
regimes in Afghanistan made that country dependent on
foreign assistance as though it were on life support. 95% of
the population, more than three-quarters of whom are women
and children, remained below the poverty line while
corruption, mismanagement, embezzlement, waste and fraud
benefited numerous warlords, including U.S. military
contractors.

After the United States invaded their country and embroiled
them in a pointless twenty-year nightmare, what the United
States owes the Afghan people is reparations, not
starvation.

The eminent human rights advocate and international law
professor Richard Falk recently emailed U.S. peace activists
encouraging an upcoming
<https://www.peaceaction.org/2022/02/03/love-to-afghanistan/
?emci=f46b515e-f288-ec11-a507-281878b83d8a&emdi=97b0e377-f48
8-ec11-a507-281878b83d8a&ceid=162930> February 14 Valentine
Day's initiative, which calls for the unfreezing of Afghan
assets, lifting any residual sanctions, and opposing their
maintenance. Professor Falk acknowledges that the disastrous
U.S. mission in Afghanistan amounted to "twenty years of
expensive, bloody, destructive futility that has
<https://richardfalk.org/2021/08/29/crime-and-punishment-in-
afghanistan/> left the country in a shambles with bleak
future prospects."

"After the experience of the past twenty years," Falk writes
in the email, "it seems time for the Afghans to be allowed
to solve their problems without outside interference. I am
sure many people of good will tried to help Afghanistan
achieve more humane results than were on the agenda of the
Taliban, but foreign interference particularly by the United
States is not the way to achieve positive state-building
goals."

Several friends and I were able to send a small amount of
money to the friend who wrote and shared with us her
heartache over being unable to help needy neighbors. "Thank
you for hearing our Afghan pain," she and her spouse
responded.

Now is a crucial time to listen and not to look away.

KATHY KELLY co-coordinates  <http://www.vcnv.org/> Voices
for Creative Nonviolence and has worked closely with the
<http://www.livewithoutwars.org/> Afghan Youth Peace
Volunteers. She is the author of Other Lands Have Dreams
published by CounterPunch / AK Press. She can be reached at:
<mailto:Kathy at vcnv.org> Kathy at vcnv.org 

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