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Afghanistan | |
Afghans Desperate; Taliban Face Economic Ruin | |
2021-12-28 | |
Since the chaotic Aug. 15 Taliban ...mindless ferocity in a turban... takeover of Kabul, an already war-devastated economy once kept alive by international donations alone is now on the verge of collapse. There isn't enough money for hospitals. Saliha, who like many Afghans uses just one name, took her infant son to the Indira Gandhi Children's Hospital in the capital, Kabul. Weak and fragile, 4-month-old Najeeb was badly malnourished. The World Health Organization is warning of millions of children suffering malnutrition, and the United Nations ...an organization conceived in the belief that we're just one big happy world, with the sort of results you'd expect from such nonsense... says 97% of Afghans will soon be living below the poverty line. For millions living in camps for the displaced or sitting outside government ministries seeking help, the only source of warmth is to huddle around open wood-burning fires. Nearly 80% of Afghanistan's previous government's budget came from the international community. That money, now cut off, financed hospitals, schools, factories and government ministries. In the Taliban's Afghanistan there is no money. Sanctions have crippled banks while the U.N., the United States and others struggle to figure out how to get hundreds of millions of dollars of humanitarian aid ![]() For many of Afghanistan's poorest, bread is their only staple. Women line up outside bakeries in the city, young children arrive before dawn to get bread. The majority scramble to find food, and fuel. The statistics provided by the U.N. are grim: Almost 24 million people in Afghanistan, around 60% percent of the population, suffer from acute hunger. As many as 8.7 million Afghans are coping with famine. School for girls under the Taliban is erratic, and in many provinces they are not allowed to attend school after grade 6, but in more than 10 provinces schools are open. The international community is working on ways to help the schools that are open while encouraging the Taliban to open the rest. In some areas, such as the western Herat ...a venerable old Persian-speaking city in western Afghanistan, populated mostly by Tadjiks, which is why it's not as blood-soaked as areas controlled by Pashtuns... province, teachers and parents together cajole local Taliban leaders to open schools. In schools like Tajrobawai Girls High School in Herat, it is paying off. Months ago, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees warned of a mass exodus of Afghans should Afghanistan be allowed to free fall into an economic abyss. The exodus has already begun as thousands stream out of Afghanistan for Iran ![]() in desperation. By the hundreds they pack buses that take them from Herat to nearby Nimroz province from where they make the dangerous trek into Iran. Some hope to go further, to ...the only place on the face of the earth that misses the Ottoman Empire... and eventually to Europa ...the land mass occupying the space between the English Channel and the Urals, also known as Moslem Lebensraum... — despite Europe's increasing determination to keep | |
Posted by:Fred |
#9 "Bad Luck" |
Posted by: Procopius2k 2021-12-28 15:03 |
#8 Spread some of that opium and rare earth money around? I thought the Chinese were going to take over. |
Posted by: KBK 2021-12-28 14:53 |
#7 Children are starving but the Taliban leaders and fighters look well-nourished. I wonder how that happens. They eat the children? |
Posted by: Skidmark 2021-12-28 13:14 |
#6 Sometimes trying to jumpstart a culture from the 7th century to the 22nd without developing all the intermediate steps does more barm than good, especially if you just leave suddenly and stop all the financial life support. In a way our hubris caused a lot of this suffering by thinking we could westernize this dumpster of a county. W should have ended it after bouncing the rubble hard and telling them and the Paki’s to avoid another jihadi tumor on their soil or suffer more of the same kinetic education. |
Posted by: NoMoreBS 2021-12-28 12:59 |
#5 Difficult to adapt to a global economy when all you know about is goats and poppies. |
Posted by: Mullah Richard 2021-12-28 11:09 |
#4 Children are starving but the Taliban leaders and fighters look well-nourished. I wonder how that happens. |
Posted by: Matt 2021-12-28 09:15 |
#3 Rush Limbaugh used to call columns like this 'politics by sob story". |
Posted by: Raj 2021-12-28 09:09 |
#2 File under: Why you can't have nice things. |
Posted by: M. Murcek 2021-12-28 07:53 |