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Financial warfare is the title of America’s new revenge mission in opposition to the folks of Afghanistan and it may show to be much more lethal than its 20-year navy occupation which resulted in a humiliating defeat and retreat because the final US troopers scrambled to get out of Kabul final yr. US sanctions imply that round a million Afghan youngsters underneath the age of 5 are at critical danger of dying from malnutrition. The aged and infirm are additionally at critical danger due to these unprecedented sanctions imposed by Washington on Afghanistan and its folks.
Not solely are the sanctions doubtlessly deadly to so many Afghans, however they’re additionally as equally unjustified as America’s invasion of their nation in 2001, within the wake of the 11 September terrorist assaults in New York and Washington as few weeks earlier. The American folks and politicians stay psychologically broken by occasions on 9/11, and are nonetheless lashing out in retaliation. As is commonly the case, harmless individuals are struggling because of this.
Wreaking revenge on the Afghan folks is just not the reply. There have been no Taliban or different Afghans among the many 9/11 hijackers, the vast majority of whom got here from Saudi Arabia. A lot of the planning was carried out in Hamburg, Germany the place the “chief pilot”, Mohammad Atta, lived for greater than 5 years. Certainly, three of the 4 suicide pilots had beforehand lived and studied in Hamburg for years and regarded Atta because the chief of their terror cell. Some may argue that it will be simply as logical — or illogical — for the US to sue the northern German metropolis the place the plans for 9/11 have been developed.
Based on a US government report, America’s personal safety companies, airport safety, intelligence, border controls and visa departments might all have performed a job in a catastrophic intelligence failure. They should take an extended, onerous look within the American mirror earlier than looking for scapegoats elsewhere.
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The last word mastermind was Al-Qaida chief Osama Bin Laden, and his household aren’t quick of some {dollars}. Within the cock-eyed world of US politics and regulation it is a marvel that nobody has began authorized proceedings to sue his mom for giving beginning to him, or the physician who delivered him. One usually under-looked facet of 9/11 is that the one plane flying in US airspace within the days after 9/11 have been busy getting members of the Bin Laden household out of America. It was all very murky.
What is obvious, although, is that the heinous terrorism of that day in 2001 was definitely not carried out within the title of the Afghan folks or the Taliban regime in place then as now. But, tragically, hundreds of thousands of Afghans have paid the worth for the phobia assaults wherein 2,996 folks have been killed.
The next struggle and twenty-year occupation of Afghanistan have had a devastating impression on the folks, who by no means actually recovered from the ten-year Soviet Occupation of 1979-1989 or the civil struggle which adopted. 5 many years of famine, struggle and occupation have damaged the nation, however simply when the Afghan folks thought that issues could not worsen, they did.
In February, US President Joe Biden signed an government order which froze $7 billion in belongings held by the Afghan Central Financial institution in US monetary establishments. On high of that, he seized $3.5bn which he mentioned could be used for humanitarian assist in Afghanistan and, bizarrely, for the households of the 9/11 victims. “This government order is designed to supply a path for the funds to achieve the folks of Afghanistan whereas retaining them out of the fingers of the Taliban and malicious actors,” mentioned the White Home. Actually?
READ: US plans to free half of $7bn frozen Afghan funds for aid, remainder to stay in US
I’m in Afghanistan as I write, and I can let you know that Biden’s government order is proving extra lethal than the trillions of {dollars} spent by three earlier US presidents of their struggle in opposition to the Taliban. I’ve seen with my very own eyes the poverty and deprivation in Logar and Nangarhar in jap Afghanistan, two of probably the most bombed provinces within the nation.
Later this week I will probably be travelling to different distant, rural areas the place the hardship being endured by the hands of US sanctions borders on the legal. The US has a lot to say about Russian atrocities being dedicated within the struggle in Ukraine — and I am not disputing that — however Biden’s sanctions on Afghanistan are additionally having a lethal impression on hundreds of thousands of innocents.
US bombs and missiles are not dropping on Afghanistan, however what Biden has accomplished along with his government order is consigning an enormous variety of harmless Afghans to a merciless, gradual demise by hunger. If that is not a struggle crime, I do not know what’s.
If I sound emotional, it’s as a result of I’m. I defy anybody to not be left feeling offended and helpless after witnessing this demise sentence unfold earlier than a watching world. There isn’t any room for journalistic impartiality in terms of injustice on this scale, and this second wave of US revenge overwhelming the Afghan folks proper now’s repugnant. As is commonly mentioned, the one factor essential for the triumph of evil is for good folks to do nothing. On this case, the Western media should take up the accountability and shine a light-weight on the unfolding humanitarian catastrophe in Afghanistan.
Reporting precisely on what is going on on the bottom doesn’t imply providing assist for the Taliban. It’s the obligation of each journalist to report that the financial sanctions led by America are threatening the lives of one million children. That is the fact, not an opinion.
I’ve usually mentioned that the pen is mightier than the sword, however the black rollerball pen in Joe Biden’s hand is proving to be extra lethal than the thermobaric bomb, a 21,600-pound behemoth, referred to as the “mom of all bombs”, that the US Air Power has utilized in Afghanistan. Subsequent week marks the fifth anniversary of 1 such bomb being dropped in the Achin district of Nangarhar province. With no obvious consciousness of the irony of his phrases, Biden accused the Russians of struggle crimes once they used the identical sort of bomb in Ukraine final month.
Like them or detest them, the ruling Taliban are to not blame for the monetary hardship, struggling, and life-threatening circumstances in Afghanistan: the blame lies squarely within the Oval Workplace, the place Biden signed the order for these crippling sanctions. As I’ve pointed out previously, the regime in Kabul couldn’t have swept into energy with the benefit it did final August, except it had a groundswell of assist from unusual Afghans throughout the nation. So it issues not what we take into consideration the Taliban; we have to settle for that the motion was the popular alternative of the vast majority of Afghans who have been fed up with a US occupation and US-installed puppet authorities that was, doubtless, one of the corrupt on the planet.
Information has simply reached me in Kabul that the UN Common Meeting has known as for Russia to be suspended from the Human Rights Council. The decision obtained a two-thirds majority of these voting within the 193-member Meeting: 93 nations voted in favour, and 24 in opposition to.
These which abstained included Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Qatar, Kuwait, Iraq, Pakistan, Malaysia and Indonesia. As a substitute of sitting on the fence, why do not these Muslim international locations come to the help of their brothers and sisters in Afghanistan throughout this blessed month of Ramadan and threaten the US with the same UN decision except Washington stops its murderous financial warfare in opposition to a million Afghan youngsters? That is the least that the Saudis, particularly, may do, on condition that the Afghans have been the autumn guys for the terrorism dedicated by Saudi residents.
The views expressed on this article belong to the writer and don’t essentially replicate the editorial coverage of Center East Monitor.
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