“O darling, you’re American in my eyes.
You are guilty; [but] I apologize.”
This traditional Afghan poem laments how civilians pay the price for American failures.
Remember the international headlines from this summer? Government collapse, Taliban takeover, hijacked military equipment and refugees packed into cargo planes?
That hellish reality in Afghanistan is ongoing: currently, twenty-four million people are facing life-threatening food insecurity, and nine million are approaching famine. The main cause? The New York Times reports that the Afghan economy is held hostage by U.S. sanctions. The war never ended, just shifted from a war of guns and bombs to a devastating war of money: in addition to sanctions, $10.5 billion dollars of IMF reserves and Afghan assets have been seized and frozen. Three-quarters of Afghanistan’s public spending and half of GDP have vanished into thin air.
Worse, these measures don’t work: chokeholding the economy punishes innocent civilians while the apathetic terrorists stay rich off drug trafficking. In fact, our measures boost terrorist recruitment as the starving populace is driven to the Taliban for relief.
The U.S., who historically destabilized Afghanistan, is obligated to fix this crisis. During the Cold War, our lawmakers thought, you know what communists hate? Religion. You know who’s “religious”? Fundamentalist groups! Voila, the origins of the extremist Mujahideen, who became…drum roll…the Taliban. Basically, the U.S. gave money and guns to terrorists to do our dirty work fighting Soviets. The American military trained terrorists to do suicide bombings. We were remarkably lacking in foresight.
Fast forward to this February: a newly-signed executive order dictates that 35% of the assets America seized will go to unspecified aid for Afghans. Imagine somebody hacking all your bank accounts, stealing everything, and saying ‘Don’t worry, a third of it’s going to a trust fund that I control, to “help” you escape poverty. You know, now that I’ve just plunged you into inescapable poverty.”
Even if the US throws money at the problem, the UN, International Rescue Committee, and Red Cross have warned Biden, with a unanimous consensus, that no amount of aid “come[s] anywhere close” to compensating for the destruction of Afghanistan’s financial system. 40 congresspeople agree. Despite this, Biden has yet to end our oppressive, exploitative policies.
Look, there is no easy solution, but clearly we need change, and the first step towards informed policymaking is information. But politicians are either gatekept from investigating or outright refuse to acknowledge the consequences of their actions. Last month, Representative Pramila Jayapal sponsored an amendment for Congress to formally study the effects of our economic policies. But 44 House Democrats joined every House Republican to block its passage. When contacted, not a single one provided an explanation.
Our policies are “impractical and morally destructive but politically convenient” as an ignorant public allows politicians to sidestep domestic backlash. During the war, TV news coverage was negligible: five minutes in all of 2020; 345 minutes in just August 2021; 21 minutes total since September. Reflect for me: how much, or little, have you heard about this months-long crisis? Yeah: that’s what scares me. Fast-changing headlines condition Americans to feel the “appropriate amount of remorse” and move on, while the crisis worsens by the day. This irresponsible attitude directly contradicts 20 years of government rhetoric about our investment in Afghanistan’. The U.S. is the arbiter of justice, forever the white savior, but only when it’s convenient to take responsibility for our actions. We prefer to forget, but since we can’t learn from our mistakes, seventy percent of U.S. interventions fail to foster democracy.
Not all of us have the luxury of ignorance. Americans have for too long condoned this cycle of intervention and complacency. As a Middle Eastern person and child of refugees, it weighs on me. The U.S. considers their failing foreign policy objectives worth more than my entire extended family in Iran and millions of families in Venezuela, Cuba, and Afghanistan. How many more people will be treated as disposable? We have a responsibility to vote, educate, donate, demand reparations and an end to seizures and sanctions, lobby our representatives to do their jobs and study the effects of their policies, and open our hearts and minds and borders to refugees and immigrants.
This solution requires commitment to anti-racism. For too long, society has valued white lives over brown and black ones. When the media calls migrants of color “uncivilized” because they “aren’t Western enough”, they justify ignoring their suffering. Every refugee deserves refuge, no matter their ethnicity, country of origin, or religion. We must remember equality as we simultaneously grapple with the heartbreaking crises in Ukraine, Afghanistan, and across the globe.
Paul Spiegel of Johns Hopkins warns that unless we act now, U.S. sanctions will kill more people than the Taliban. Afghan women like Zaigul agree: “How on earth does the West think they are helping our prospects when we can’t feed our families? You can live without freedom, but you can’t live if you have nothing to eat.”
