January 24, 2022:
Information Clearing House
-- "
Code Pink"--
Just five months after President Biden’s
high profile troop withdrawal from Afghanistan the
country is in crisis. According to the United
Nations World Food Program,
23 million Afghans are living in conditions of
“severe food insecurity,” and conditions are
expected to get worse throughout the winter. This
crisis comes not from President Biden’s so-called
end of the war on Afghanistan, but rather through
his continuation of the war through economic means.
Immediately after the U.S. troop
withdrawal, the United States, along with the United
Nations Security Council,
launched heavy sanctions on Afghanistan. This
resulted in a withdrawal of international funding
equivalent to 40% of the country’s entire GDP.
Thiswas immediately devastating to the country given
that
75% of its public spending was funded by foreign
aid grants.
While it took a while for the economic
crisis to gain attention from the international
community, the situation in Afghanistan has gotten
so bad that major news outlets are finally covering
the issue. Not only are they covering it; they are
publishing direct criticism of Biden’s policy of
economic warfare. The New York Times editorial board
published an
op-ed requesting that Biden “let innocent
Afghans have their money,” and on the one year
anniversary of Biden’s inauguration, MSNBC columnist
Zeeshan Aleem wrote an
opinion piece arguing that Biden never ended the
war and that his economic sanctions are a form of
collective punishment on the Afghan people.
Reader financed- No
Advertising - No Government Grants -
No Algorithm - This
Is Independent
With major news outlets publishing such
direct critiques of Biden’s economic warfare on
Afghanistan, it is safe to assume that even news
consumers who do not pay close attention to foreign
policy are learning more about sanctions than they
usually would. However what is unfortunately not
being made clear to a mainstream audience is that
Afghanistan is just a particularly egregious example
of a larger way that the United States wages war
throughout the world.
For more than half a century – decades
before the United States began militarily occupying
Afghanistan – the United States began perfecting its
tactics of economic warfare on the people of Cuba.
The trade embargo the United States placed on Cuba
beginning in 1960 now forbids most U.S. companies
from doing business with Cuba and even includes laws
that punish foreign companies from trading with
Cuba. Though Cuba has managed to maintain high
standards of healthcare and education in spite of
the embargo, the United Nations estimates that over
six decades the embargo has cost the Cuban economy
$130 billion dollars, resulting in regular food,
fuel, and medicine shortages.
Tensions began to ease for a short time
with President Obama opening up relations with Cuba
towards the end of his presidency. Sadly this
opening was short-lived. The Trump administration
went back on all progress made under the Obama
administration and placed even more severe sanctions
on the country, including a limit on remittances
that Cuban Americans can send to their relatives in
Cuba. This was especially cruel since remittances
were long one of the few sources of income that the
Cuban people could rely on. Trump’s economic warfare
on Cuba also meant that when the Covid-19 pandemic
came, Cuba was
deprived of millions of syringes it needed to
vaccinate its population.
The Trump administration had a special
love of sanctions and Cuba was not the only victim
of such economic warfare. In 2017 the Trump
administration put sanctions on Venezuela, severely
limiting the country’s ability to import food. A
report published by the Center for Economic and
Policy Research in 2019 found that these sanctions
resulted in the death of tens of thousands of
Venezuelans. In 2018 the administration launched
“maximum pressure” sanctions on Iran which deprived
the country of medical resources. The sanctions cut
especially into Iranian hospitals’ ability to treat
cancer patients. The sanctions also resulted in
the Covid-19 pandemic
hitting Iranians especially hard. Amid a surge
in Covid deaths in Iran, Trump actually increased
sanctions on the country.
The Biden administration has maintained
the cruel economic warfare that Trump was such a fan
of. Biden has carried over Trump’s sanctions on
countries like Venezuela and Iran and added his own
sanctions on various countries including
Nicaragua and
Ethiopia. Whatever justifications he may
provide, the cost of sanctions is always placed
primarily on the average civilian. Even when
sanctions are only placed on individuals within a
country’s government, businesses tend to completely
steer clear of countries where U.S. sanctions are in
place, resulting in the entire populations of
sanctioned countries being economically cut off from
the international community.
As the ongoing crisis in Afghanistan is
demonstrating to many people, economic warfare can
be just as deadly as traditional warfare, especially
when it's being done by the United States. Sanctions
are often used by imperialist leaders because they
can be sold to the public as a more peaceful way for
the United States to inflict its will. But economic
warfare is still warfare. People should be outraged
at how the United States is inflicting starvation
and deprivation on the Afghan people, and that
outrage must expand. Humanity has an obligation to
fight for an end to the economic siege of Afghans as
part of a larger fight against economic siege on
Cubans, Iranians, Venezuelans, Nicaraguans,
Ethiopians, and any other people that find
themselves on the receiving end of U.S. economic
warfare.
Have
you seen "Help Tom with medical expenses to
fight leukemia"?
I
thought you might be interested in
supporting this GoFundMe,
https://gofund.me/8b902e5a
Even a small donation could help Michael
Feeley reach their fundraising goal. And if
you can't make a donation, it would be
great if you could share the fundraiser to
help spread the word. |
Registration is necessary to post comments.
We ask only that you do not use obscene or offensive
language. Please be respectful of others.