Afghans go hungry as U.S. and Taliban officials blame each other
▻https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/interactive/2022/afghans-go-hungry-us-taliban-officials-blame-each-other
Afghanistan’s humanitarian crisis has been building for decades, driven not just by persistent poverty and too little rain, but also by generations of war and an economy almost entirely dependent on international support. Still, it was the Biden administration’s decision to halt aid in response to the Taliban takeover that put the country on the brink of catastrophe.
“Not another cent will go to a future government of #Afghanistan that doesn’t uphold basic human rights,” State Department spokesman Ned Price told reporters after the fall of Kabul in August. It was a “knee-jerk” response, in the recent words of one U.S. official involved in those policy discussions, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk about them.
The State Department’s refusal to recognize the Taliban also made it impossible for the country’s new rulers to access billions of dollars in foreign assets. Parallel moves by the World Bank and the European Union brought Afghanistan’s economy crashing down.
As winter approached and humanitarian groups warned of famine, the Biden administration came under increasing pressure to prevent a catastrophe. In recent months, the United States and others began to funnel money through the United Nations and groups that bypass Taliban leadership. Yet these hundreds of millions of dollars in international aid are a small fraction of the billions that once kept the country afloat.
The economic isolation of Afghanistan has done little to moderate the Taliban’s hard-line rule. But the consequences have been devastating for the Afghan people, especially the poor.
Bon résumé de ce que font les #sanctions économiques.