Afghanistan Faces “Tsunami of Hunger” as U.S. Sanctions Crash Country’s Economy

This is so profoundly disturbing and heartbreaking. And it is so important for us to know these facts. — Molly

The World Food Program has warned Afghanistan faces a “tsunami of hunger” as the economy continues to collapse, due in part to U.S. sanctions and the freezing of Afghan assets following the Taliban takeover of Kabul. Meanwhile, President Biden once again defended his decision to withdraw U.S. troops from Afghanistan on Wednesday without acknowledging the humanitarian crisis that followed his exit. We speak with journalist Jane Ferguson, who recently traveled to Afghanistan to report on the collapse of basic government services and the various factors that led to the collapse of the economy, which she says was “completely reliant on international aid.” She also speaks about the “massive pressure” the White House is under to respond to the humanitarian crisis, as well as the Taliban’s handling of the growing women’s rights movement. “What these women really need is more eyes on their movement, more of them on air, more of their voices being put on television and in the newspapers,” she says. Her most recent New Yorker piece is titled “Afghanistan Has Become the World’s Largest Humanitarian Crisis.”

 

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman.

 

The World Food Program is warning Afghanistan is facing a, quote, “tsunami of hunger.” The group estimates 23 million Afghans face acute food shortages, including nearly 9 million who are close to starvation. Afghanistan’s economy collapsed after the U.S. and international financial organizations froze Afghan assets after the fall of Kabul.

 

Earlier this week, Senator Bernie Sanders urged President Biden to take immediate action. Sanders wrote, quote, “Afghanistan is facing a humanitarian catastrophe. I urge the Biden administration to immediately release billions in frozen Afghan government funds to help avert this crisis, and prevent the death of millions of people.”

 

We’re joined now by Jane Ferguson. She’s a special correspondent for PBS NewsHour, contributor to The New Yorker. She’s reported extensively from Afghanistan over the years and was in Kabul as it fell to the Taliban in August last year. She returned to Taliban-controlled Afghanistan in November to report on the humanitarian crisis. Her latest piece for The New Yorker, “Afghanistan Has Become the World’s Largest Humanitarian Crisis.”

 

Jane, welcome back to Democracy Now! In your piece, you write, “Exhausted mothers stood next to the beds and stared wide-eyed at their babies. One leaned over, sang lullabies, and gently kissed her child’s cheek. … About a third of the children who arrive at the unit do not survive. … The new government is struggling to feed the country’s thirty-nine million people, and the chance that an Afghan baby will go hungry and die is the highest in twenty years.” Can you describe the suffering you saw in this neonatal unit, and not only in this one hospital, but what you found? I mean, the worst it’s been in 20 years, since the U.S. invaded Afghanistan, you’re saying.

 

JANE FERGUSON: Yes, Amy. What we’re really seeing is the collapse of not only any kind of economic means for those mothers and their husbands to be able to make enough money to feed the children or to be able to make enough money to feed themselves and lactate babies, but we’ve also seen a compounding crisis because the medical institutions and the medical facilities across the country have also been collapsing. You know, once the flow of money, once the economic institutions just froze across the country, then you couldn’t see anybody who worked at these facilities getting paid or any of the flow of money coming in. So you have families across the country with no income. And then, when they take their children to the hospital because they’re malnourished, because there are such high cases of malnourished babies, many of them have to go to whatever units are open.

 

And in that story, I was describing a unit in Kabul, which was one of the few that was still operating. And those beds with babies were sometimes three, four babies in a bed. The hospital staff, many of whom hadn’t been paid in months, were basically trying to keep them alive but said that infections were just running riot through the units because they just don’t have the medicines, they’re completely overwhelmed with malnourished babies and massively understaffed. Many of those mothers that I described will have had to come from rural areas where local clinics have — many of them have completely collapsed. A recent statistic by Save the Children in Afghanistan said that as little as 17% of medical facilities across the country are now fully operational.

 

AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about exactly what the U.S. has frozen in terms of assets, and how you saw that directly translating to hunger and poverty on the ground in Afghanistan?

 

JANE FERGUSON: Well, when we look at the economic collapse in Afghanistan, we do broadly need to look at two major factors, although it is much more complex than that. On the one hand, we had the Afghan government assets, of about nine-and-a-half, close to $10 billion, that were being held overseas, many of them in the United States. Those were frozen instantly when the Taliban swept into Kabul and the government collapsed on August 15th of 2021. Now, they were frozen because the international community and the United States, the White House, didn’t want that money falling directly into the hands of the Taliban and the Haqqani leadership that had marched into Kabul that day.

 

And so, effectively, by freezing that money, we’ve also seen — and the sanctions that have come along with it — we’ve also seen the economic system in Afghanistan collapse. It became either illegal or extremely risky legally to send money in and out of Afghanistan. As a result, there were basically financial constraints on every bank in Afghanistan. At one point — and I do believe this is still the case now, but it might be even worse because it changes day to day — families and bank account holders were told they could get $200 a month of their own money out of the banks. So the banking system, as a result, also collapsed. And much of that money would have been used by a government of Afghanistan to pay their workers. As with many countries around the world, the government is the main employer. Whether or not you’re a road sweeper or you’re a schoolteacher or you’re an economist in a bank, typically you will be getting a salary from the government. Once that stops, you just have an absolutely cataclysmic cash flow stop in the economy, as well as the banking crisis.

 

Now, on top of that, you saw an NGO community, the charities and the international charities that have been working in Afghanistan for 20 years or more, leave the country, and for it to become incredibly difficult for them to send money into the country because of sanctions and legal problems. Now, Afghanistan’s economy was completely reliant on international aid. And it’s these issues that have basically caused incomes in Afghanistan to collapse. There’s plenty of food in the country, but nobody has any money.

 

Please go here for the to continue the transcript and for the full original program: https://www.democracynow.org/2022/1/21/afghanistan_world_s_largest_humanitarian_crisis