‘Thank You For Hearing Our Afghan Pain’
by Kathy Kelly — 11/02/2022| Countercurrents
▻https://countercurrents.org/2022/02/thank-you-for-hearing-our-afghan-pain
▻https://cdn.countercurrents.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/Afghanistan.jpg
(...) After visiting Afghanistan late last year, Dominik Stillhart, head of the International Committee of the Red Cross, said he felt livid over the collective punishment being imposed on Afghans through the freezing of the country’s assets. Referring to $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.”
Forty-eight members of Congress have 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.” (...)