As a report published Wednesday revealed the loss of over 500,000 jobs since the Taliban retook control of Afghanistan last August, critics of the Biden administration’s policy of economic sanctions and freezing billions of dollars in Afghan government funds renewed warnings of a “U.S.-fueled genocide” in the starving, suffering, war-torn nation.
“The Taliban barely fired a shot in taking over the country last summer, but the U.S., with the press of a button, has flattened it.”
The United Nations International Labor Organization (ILO) reported that Afghanistan’s economy has been “paralyzed” since the Taliban takeover, with more than half a million jobs lost in the third quarter of 2021, much of the decline attributable to a precipitous drop in “women’s participation in the workplace.”
The agency projects further employment losses of 700,000 to over 900,000 by mid-2022.
However, a direr—yet connected—crisis is being largely blamed on the Biden administration’s punitive policies that, while meant to target the Taliban, are causing grievous harm to ordinary Afghans.
The Intercept‘s Ryan Grim and Sara Sirota noted Wednesday that after the Taliban seized power, the United States—which as an occupying power controlled Afghanistan’s foreign currency reserves—froze more than $9 billion in funds belonging to the country.
Excellent journalism from @ryangrim and @SaraLSirota shows how the fight to save millions of people in Afghanistan from deadly US sanctions is taking place in Congress; grassroots pressure matters! https://t.co/OvotFS5SGT pic.twitter.com/6c5MfR2fxK
— Mark Weisbrot (@MarkWeisbrot) January 20, 2022
On August 14, $300 million was scheduled for transfer to the U.S.-backed Afghan government. However, the Taliban entered Kabul the following day, and U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken stopped the transfer.
Back in November, Amnesty International warned that the freeze contributed to plunging the country into “a full-blown economic crisis.”
Yamini Mishra, the group’s South Asia regional director, said at the time that “without an urgent program of targeted international support and without permitting the use of Afghanistan government reserves to support the country’s population, the scene is set for a human catastrophe over the coming months.”
“The Taliban barely fired a shot in taking over the country last summer,” wrote Grim and Sirota, “but the U.S., with the press of a button, has flattened it.”
‘It feels like they are being forced slowly but inevitably towards starvation’
— ITV News (@itvnews) January 18, 2022
With 3.9 million children at risk of severe malnutrition in Afghanistan, @johnrayitv meets just a few of those facing desperate poverty, hunger and misery
Read more here: https://t.co/PxQARFfrXJ pic.twitter.com/eEIkPiGn3y
Grim and Sirota continued:
The economic fallout has been extreme, much as it would be if the U.S. Federal Reserve suddenly lost access to its own capital. The result has been bank closures, mass business failures, soaring unemployment, collapse of the currency against the dollar, soaring inflation, and death by starvation. Desperate Afghans have resorted to selling off their belongings for food or burning them to stay warm. A migration crisis is brewing. The Biden administration’s sanctions have deepened the economic collapse, while the White House has also urged European partners and multilateral institutions like the World Bank and International Monetary Fund to similarly starve the nation of capital.
Vicki Aken, Afghanistan director at the humanitarian aid group International Rescue Committee, said last week that “the grim reality is that disease and child malnutrition are rising as health workers go without pay and hospitals go without medicine, while nine million Afghans are on the brink of famine conditions against the backdrop of massive economic collapse.”
The World Food Program warned last month that, without urgent funding needs being met, 3.2 million Afghan children faced life-threatening malnutrition.
Common Dreams reported last week that the Biden administration has promised just over $300 million for humanitarian assistance in Afghanistan, far short of the $5 billion urgently sought by the U.N. in its largest-ever single-country aid appeal.
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