Genocide

When the United States stole $7 billion from Afghanistan on February 11, that was no mere crime of robbery. It was a war crime and a crime against humanity that condemns possibly millions of Afghans to starvation. In short, prelude to genocide. Biden prevaricates about his excuse for this outright theft of Afghan funds, namely compensating the 9/11 victims. The Afghan government didn’t kill their loved ones, indeed back in 2001 the Taliban offered to turn the al Qaeda culprits over to Washington. The US refused the offer and invaded instead.

Biden’s shocking action makes all Americans complicit in sickening atrocities. According to UNICEF, “more than 23 million Afghans face acute hunger, including 9 million who are nearly famished”. By the middle of this year, 97 percent of Afghans will be in poverty, the UN estimates. To say these people need every penny of their $7 billion is an understatement. To say those who steal half of it from them are monsters is the only moral assessment of such larceny. (The other half will supposedly be returned to them at some unspecified future date.) Biden has done highway robbers one better: “Your money AND your life” is the new American message, delivered in ringing tones of mendacious self-righteousness.

This particular heist equals roughly 40 percent of the Afghan economy and approximately 14 months of Afghan imports, according to Mark Weisbrot in the February 4 Sacramento Bee. But Biden earlier slapped other sanctions on the country, as a parting gift when US troops finally left after 20 years of wrecking the place. Overall Biden’s sanctions mean “more people will die…over the next year than the number who died in 20 years of war,” Weisbrot wrote in the March 15 CounterPunch. That’s because Biden’s gratuitous sanctions kill funding for the Afghan government along with money for desperately needed food imports. So between the multi-decade US war on this poor nation, drought, Covid and frozen currency reserves – frozen by the Biden administration, just to be clear – it’s no wonder millions of pauperized Afghans hover over the abyss of starvation.

Thus Biden cancelled out the good he did by yanking US troops out of Afghanistan. The military withdrew, but the US president opened the door to famine. And that killer walked right in. This entirely man-made catastrophe could be averted, of course. Lift the sanctions. Give Afghanistan back all of its money and lives will be saved. Don’t and lots of people will die.

Clare Daly, MEP from Dublin summed it up best in a March 8 speech: “There’s no doubt about it, we’re living in times where…the lives of innocent civilians are sacrificed in the wars of their masters. Yes in Ukraine, but not only. Since the last plenary tens of thousands of Afghani citizens have been forced to flee in search of food and safety, five million children face famine, an agonizing and painful death”.

Excerpted: ‘Starving a People, Committing a Genocide: Biden’s Sanctions on Afghanistan’.

Courtesy: Couterpunch.org