After Biden's disgraceful botched withdrawal from Afghanistan, leaving it to the tender mercies of the Taliban and making a mockery of all those years helping to build some kind of decent world there, it's no surprise that the country is now such a wreck. Noted foreign correspondent Christina Lamb has been been around a long time, so when she says In my 35 years as a reporter, I have never seen anything of Afghanistan’s magnitude, it's worth taking note:
At the age of eight, Fatima’s future is decided. Her eyes limpid and far away, her clothes tattered emerald green, she would, she says, “like to go to school and study”. Instead, she has been sold in marriage to a man she has not met, to buy bread and time for her starving family.
In their mud-walled dwelling in western Kabul, Fatima sits on the floor around an unlit stove with her parents, siblings, widowed aunt and grandparents, all shivering, hungry and coughing. Family members proffer dirty plastic bags to me, each bearing stories of despair.
Her aunt holds a chest x-ray and a diagnosis for tuberculosis, which they have no money to treat, and a photograph of her bloody-faced eldest son killed by a suicide bomb last year. The grandfather tips out a few twigs, scraps of papers and rubbish collected from the street — their only fuel. The last bag is that of Fatima’s father, Lala Jan, from which he pulls out a charred shirt....
This is the reality of life in a country where according to the UN, 23 million people, more than half the population, face starvation and a million children may die. Already 97 per cent do not have enough to eat. “Afghanistan is hanging by a thread,” warned the UN secretary-general, Antonio Guterres, last week.
Not only is the country suffering the worst drought in 30 years, but also a bitterly cold winter, an overnight end to foreign aid and all the work it brought, and the freezing of $9 billion of government assets, meaning it cannot pay salaries. All this in a war-torn land that was already one of the poorest on earth and where millions have been widowed or disabled. Now it is feared more may die from hunger than the war.
The person charged with trying to stop that happening is Mary-Ellen McGroarty, country director for World Food Programme (WFP), an Irishwoman based in Kabul who stands no nonsense from the Taliban, even if they refuse to look her in the eye when talking to her.
It is a task she says keeps her awake at night. “It’s terrifying because of the scale of the crisis. Everything imploded so quickly. We’re doing everything possible to stop people starving to death but we don’t have space — we need to have done it yesterday. Children are dying already.
“I know how to respond to a drought but what do we do for economic implosion?” she adds. “If we don’t resuscitate the economy, humanitarian needs will escalate and 23 million starving will become 30 million.”
As a foreign correspondent for the past 35 years, I have seen too much famine, disease and death. But I have never seen anything of this magnitude. Here it is countrywide, it crosses social classes and it is happening before our eyes with far too little being done to mitigate it. All in a country into which the West poured billions in aid and military expenditure over the past 20 years — an estimated £40 billion from the UK alone.
And there's the old problem - familiar in a more extreme form in North Korea - about the moral intricacies of supplying humanitarian aid to a country ravaged by famine yet ruled by a nasty totalitarian clique. You can't watch people starve, yet the aid will inevitably get exploited by the government as it clings on to power and thereby perpetuates the problem.
McGroarty says she is haunted by the skeletal babies she has seen in hospitals, skin stretched so tightly over bones that they look way beyond their years. A doctor in Jowzjan, who works with Save the Children said about 40 malnourished children died on their way to his hospital last month.
International Rescue Committee clinics have reported a thirtyfold increase in the number of acutely malnourished children over the past month alone.
The UK announced £97 million of emergency aid last week, making £286 million so far. But it is still less than it was providing before the Taliban took over and the WFP has received only $700 million of the $2.6 billion it says is needed this year just to keep the country on life support. “$2.6 billion may look like a gigantic number but for 23 million people that’s around 30 cents per person a day,” McGroarty said. “I don’t even want to talk about what will happen if we don’t get it.”
The international community remains conflicted about whether to help a country governed by a group that Nato forces have been fighting for 20 years, and many of whose members are under sanctions for terrorism, and are keeping women from work and the only place on earth girls are not going to high school. Ten days ago two young women disappeared after taking part in protests that were pepper-sprayed by Taliban.
Such concerns were raised in Oslo last week at the first meeting on European soil of Taliban leaders and officials including Nigel Casey, the UK’s special representative for Afghanistan.
No one disputes the galling nature of the Taliban posting photos on Twitter of pallets of dollars in international aid being flown in amid such human rights concerns.
But McGroarty believes there is no choice. “You cannot condition humanitarian support,” she insisted. “This is a country where 75 per cent of its budget was foreign assistance. If we don’t send money, people will die. Should the children of Afghanistan starve? Is that punishing the Taliban?”
No easy answers. We're clearly going to hear a lot more of this. And none of it is going to help Joe Biden look good.
Right through the 20 years of the Allied occupation of Afghanistan, we had a relentless barrage of negative comment. To simplify: from the right, moans about how Afghanistan was none of our business, and with their backward Islamist culture they were beyond help anyway; from the left even louder moans about imperialism, colonialism, and trying to force western culture onto a country with its own proud cultural traditions so we could sell them stuff and exploit their natural assets - whatever they were.
Well, now here we are...
What do the Taliban have to say about all these starving children and people? How do they propose to make things better? Are they doing anything? Are they providing any relief? One assumes Taliban fighters are getting fed.
There don’t appear to be any news or reports on these matters, at least, I haven't seen any.
Posted by: Alan | January 30, 2022 at 12:09 PM
Well yes - I get the impression the Taliban are not that concerned, beyond the cynical warning that cutting off humanitarian aid wouldn't hurt them: “If they believe starving people to death will have the effect they desire — an uprising and toppling of this government — they’re sorely mistaken.”
As long as they themselves get fed, stay in power, and get to do the things that matter to them - like making sure women stay in the home and don't get educated - then they don't seem particularly bothered.
Posted by: Mick H | January 30, 2022 at 02:03 PM