It is within the power of the U.S. and
its allies to release that chokehold,
but they have to want to stop choking
the life out of the Afghan people.
By Daniel Larison
January 02, 2022:
Information Clearing
House
-- Graeme Smith
urges the U.S. and its allies to
stop starving Afghanistan:
The United States and its allies
should ease their restrictions and
get to work helping revive the
Afghan economy. Doing so would
reinforce regional stability, stem
the drug trade, and reduce the
likelihood of another migration
crisis. Saving millions of Afghans
from destitution might also redeem
U.S. prestige after its chaotic
withdrawal. The unavoidable side
effect would be some degree of
assistance for the Taliban regime,
but such tradeoffs are a hallmark of
realpolitik.
The withdrawal from Afghanistan
should have marked the end of the U.S.
war there, but an even more destructive
economic warfare had taken its place.
The Afghan people are being punished
more by our government’s sanctions than
they were by its bombs, and now they are
staring one of the largest man-made
famines in the face. I have
made
similar
arguments over the last two months.
I would add that the severe
humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan is an
example of what sanctions can do to an
economy that is also being starved of
government reserves and international
aid. Other economies targeted by broad
and crippling sanctions have some
resources to fall back on. Afghanistan
was so dependent on U.S. and
international support that the moment
the funding spigot was turned off and
the sanctions took effect the country
went into freefall. “Maximum pressure”
on Iran and Venezuela is cruel, but
doing the same thing to an even more
vulnerable country is far more vicious.
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There is a fear of “legitimizing” the
Taliban if restrictions are eased and
government assets are unfrozen, but the
Biden administration should consider
what it would mean for our government to
be responsible for causing the mass
starvation of millions of people. This
would not only be a monstrous crime
against innocent people, which is what
matters most, but it would also be an
unparalleled propaganda win for
adversaries. The worst thing the U.S.
could do after ending its unwinnable war
in Afghanistan is to be responsible for
creating a humanitarian catastrophe on
this scale through our government’s
mindless attachment to sanctions and
punitive measures.
There has always been a vindictive
aspect to U.S. sanctions. States that
defy the U.S. are punished, and they
continue to be punished until they obey.
The fact that it is ordinary people that
bear the burden of this punishment
usually doesn’t matter to policymakers,
who insist that they have carved out
“exemptions” and then do nothing when
even those exemptions fail to work. Even
when the exemptions work as intended, an
economy cannot function on humanitarian
aid alone. This is not hard to grasp. If
you make trade and commerce with the
outside world all but impossible, you
cannot provide enough aid to sustain the
tens of millions of people that need
help.
Keeping sanctions in place and
keeping government assets frozen while
you permit a trickle of aid money to
flow amounts to putting an entire nation
under siege. Pointing to the trickle of
aid money as proof that you are
committed to helping the people is just
insulting at that point. As Smith says,
“the main reason for devastation is the
West’s chokehold on the economy.” It is
within the power of the U.S. and its
allies to release that chokehold, but
they have to want to stop choking the
life out of the Afghan people.
As Lee Fang explained in a recent
report, the few humanitarian
exemptions to sanctions in Afghanistan
are woefully inadequate to address the
needs of the Afghan people:
But those humanitarian
exemptions, overseen by the
Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets
Control, are nowhere near enough,
according to experts who spoke to
The Intercept. The OFAC licenses,
including new licenses released
December 22, have not curbed the
global chilling effect of the
sanctions and are ineffective in
preventing a spiraling disaster that
could kill more Afghan people than
nearly 20 years of U.S.-backed war
and occupation.
As we have seen in many other cases,
overcompliance by financial institutions
and businesses is a major problem. These
institutions would rather not take the
chance of being on the wrong side of
U.S. sanctions, and so they write off
doing business in Afghanistan:
“The OFAC licenses never work,
never will,” added Shumacher. “The
moment that the banks see any
sanction or any sort of restriction,
they just walk away from doing any
transactions. That’s what’s
happening now with Afghanistan. The
banks are not willing to take our
business, and no amount of OFAC
licenses is going to satisfy their
needs.”
Sanctions are an indiscriminate
weapon, and they kill lots of innocent
civilians. If nothing is done, they will
soon be responsible for causing mass
starvation and mass death in
Afghanistan. This is still a preventable
outcome, but there is not much time left
to avert the worst of a man-made famine
that is already happening.