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Agony Deepens in AfghanistanThe Other U.S. Occupation
In his Sept. 23, 2003 United Nations address, President Bush announced: "The Taliban was a sponsor and a servant of terrorism. When confronted that regime chose defiance and that regime is no more…." Now the people of Afghanistan are "building a nation fully joined in the war against terrorism." But voices from Afghanistan dispute the president's rosy view that the Taliban is "no more" or that peace and stability are on the horizon. Japanese physician Testu Nakamura has been battling the devastating effects of drought and starvation on the people of Afghanistan. In a recent article in Dawn, a Pakistani newspaper, Dr. Nakamura estimated that four million Afghanis are on the verge of dying from lack of food and water. He also described children dying in their mothers' arms as they wait for medical attention in crowded clinics. The Taliban are still alive and fighting. On Sept. 10 suspected Taliban guerillas killed four Afghani employees of the Danish Committee for the Aid of Afghan Refugees, an NGO developing water, building and health projects since 1988. A local Red Crescent director told the Financial Times that "the Americans were unable to eradicate the Taliban…and now they are growing back." On Sept. 19 The New York Times reported, "Even American officials in Afghanistan concede that the sense of alienation and disappointment [among regular Afghanis] may be helping to nourish the boldest regrouping yet by supporters of the Taliban." NEW TERRORISTS IN POWERU.S. military action might have replaced one form of terrorism by implanting another, according to some observers on the scene. A July 2003 Human Rights Watch report, Killing You is a Very Easy Thing For Us, documents rampant human rights abuses in Afghanistan undertaken by allies of the United States. HRW reports that torture, rape, killings and forced displacements "are being committed by gunmen and warlords who were propelled into power by the United States and its coalition partners after the Taliban fell in 2001." Human Rights Watch has also documented routine and unpunished rape and killing of women throughout the country. Finance Minister Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai warns that Afghanistan is on the verge of becoming a "narco-mafia state." One opium grower recently told the Washington Post, "of course it bothers me [to grow opium], but we have to cultivate it [because] we've had to borrow money, sell household items and don't have enough to eat." The International Monetary Fund estimates that opium sales now account for 40-50 percent of the economy. The vast majority of arable land is used to grow opium poppies while people suffer from lack of food and water. President Bush has failed to back up his talk of fostering democracy and stability in post-Taliban Afghanistan. Officials estimate that rebuilding the country will cost between $20 and $30 billion, but in its most recent request, the Bush administration asked a scant $800 million. As of May, according to the Center for International Cooperation at New York University, the U.S. had completed only $191million in reconstruction projects. There appears to be no shortage of money to fund war fighting, however. The ongoing military occupation of Afghanistan costs more than a $1 billion a month. Yet Washington can only muster a fraction of that to help rebuild what was destroyed in wave after wave of bombing by its $1 million Tomahawk cruise missiles. Frida Berrigan is a Senior Research Associate at the Arms Trade Resource Center, a project of the World Policy Institute. |
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