Afghanistan Heading Towards Poverty and Starvation!

 

After 20 years of devastation and destruction in Afghanistan by the United States, which withdrew its forces in despair on August 15 last year, the whole world seems to be bent on punishing Afghans for angering the United States. If it is not resentment then what else, no one cares about the poverty in Afghanistan. About half of the total population of Afghanistan, about 40 million people have nothing to eat even once in 24 hours. Famine-stricken Afghan families are forced to sell their 3- to 10-year-old daughters for work to wealthy foreigners; just sell one daughter and save the rest of the family from starvation. In this regard, the BBC, CNN, and Al Jazeera TV channels have also given details in their reports about the sword of hunger hanging over the heads of Afghans. America has been explaining that a lot of money is being spent on the construction and development of Afghanistan from the taxes collected from Americans. Apart from the American people, the United Nations also believed that the United States and its allies would change the fate of Afghans. The 20-year period is not short, after the evacuation, the US government, in response to questions from journalists, said that in the last 20 years, over three trillion dollars have been spent on Afghanistan. Where did the money go? Who ate and drank No one in the United States is questioning this now, nor is anyone worried that with such a hefty sum, every city in Afghanistan, big or small, could be transformed into one of the most developed cities in the world. There, the economy and business could be expanded in such a way that today the Afghan people, instead of hoping for help from the world, would join the developed countries. The state-of-the-art hospitals being built in Afghanistan would have set a precedent for medical facilities throughout Central Asia. Unfortunately, all of this was limited to mere claims and lip service.

    So what happened on the ground is that the United States confiscated 9 billion Afghan deposits in its banks after leaving Afghanistan. The revelation came as a shock to the world that the Afghan government needed the United States to run its administration, pay salaries to employees in the military and other government agencies, and pay for purchases and business needs from the outside world because Afghanistan's treasury is in the United States. And his key was with the White House. Then the United States must acknowledge the fact that in 2001 the war on terror was an excuse, the real purpose of the Americans was to occupy Afghanistan, loot natural resources, and kick start the cultivation of poppy. That is why the Americans considered it unnecessary to spend dollars for the reconstruction and development of Afghanistan for 20 years because the conquests are plundered and there is no investment. The collective fault of the Afghans is that some of the brave Afghans within them were not ready to accept American slavery, nor did they recognize the United States as their ruler. To throw dust in the eyes of the Afghan people, the Americans had appointed people like Hamid Karzai or Ashraf Ghani as rulers in Afghanistan. Elections were also rigged there to deceive the world, but these puppet governments had only the power to loot Afghanistan, and blame Pakistan. That is why, due to the anti-Afghan policies of the US-imposed rulers in Kabul, the people there became more and more sympathetic to the Afghan Taliban fighting against the Americans. It was that support that finally drove the world's largest power and its allies out of Afghanistan.

    When the Americans withdrew from Afghanistan, they were happy that the local army they had stationed in Afghanistan, equipped with modern American weapons, together with India, a force of 3.5 lac, could somehow defeat the Afghan Taliban in Afghanistan. The building of American aspirations collapsed when on August 15, 2021, the Afghan Taliban entered Kabul without firing and took control of the whole of Afghanistan. From here, things get trickier for the Afghan people. The food and food reserves in Afghanistan soon ran out. The Afghan Taliban government did not have the money to buy food, grain, and medicine for the people from the outside world. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) bill had been deactivated on US orders. No country was willing to provide aid to the Afghans without US permission. Initially, China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and some Islamic countries provided some assistance but they could not run the country's system. Nor could the daily needs of the people be met. 

When the Americans offered to provide aid through NGOs, the Afghan Taliban rejected their offer, saying that American and Western NGOs provide assistance under the guise of aid to the liberals and anti-Islamic ideologies which cannot be allowed. Despite its economic woes, Pakistan has been doing as much as it could for the past several months, but it is not enough. On the other hand, a severe situation is, that Ukraine, despite being the world's largest supplier of 40% of the world's food in terms of wheat and other commodities, has not been able to grow wheat this year. Thanks to this the whole world is going to be in the grip of food shortage but the situation in Afghanistan is different, hunger and starvation can cause the terrorists to regroup once again. India, which has been faltering since the end of its role in Afghanistan, will also have the opportunity to re-establish its ties with the TTP and Baloch terrorists and renew its nefarious intentions against Pakistan from Pakistan's western border. If terrorism gains momentum in Afghanistan, its effects will not be limited to Pakistan but the world will also become insecure. This can only be addressed by drawing the world's attention to the severe food crisis in Afghanistan.

Urdu Copy

Written by Khalid Baig,

Published in Daily Nawa-i-Waqt,

Date: 16 May 2022.