Afghanistan Starves

Nov 8, 2021

Over half of the people of Afghanistan are facing acute hunger this winter, according to a U.N. report. Almost 23 million people will be severely hungry, a 35% increase from just last year. Only five percent of households have enough to eat every day.

The U.N. World Food Program director, David Beasley, said, "Afghanistan is now among the world’s worst humanitarian crises—if not the worst—and food security has all but collapsed. This winter, millions of Afghans will be forced to choose between migration and starvation … we are on a countdown to catastrophe."

For the first time, urban residents are experiencing similar rates of hunger to rural communities. The numbers of beggars in the cities, including children, are rising. The malnutrition ward in the major hospital in the city of Kandahar is packed with women and children. The U.N. says that if humanitarian aid doesn’t come soon, more than a million children will die.

This extreme hunger is due to drought, conflict—and above all, to an economic collapse caused by sanctions brought by the U.S. and other countries against the Taliban regime. Billions of dollars in foreign aid payments, amounting to 40% of the country’s gross domestic product, have been halted, and almost 10 billion dollars of Afghan central bank assets have been frozen. Money is severely lacking; many government employees and other workers have stopped drawing a paycheck. That means that even when there is food on supermarket shelves, people do not have money to buy it.

In effect, after inflicting decades of war on the country, the U.S. is now punishing the population of Afghanistan for not supporting the puppet government it had put in place. It’s a humanitarian crime of epic proportions, done in the name of U.S. domination.