TO HELL WITH THE HUNGRY, SAVOUR THE SANCTIONS
The most brutally moving aid poster I’ve ever seen is of an emaciated child sitting with an empty food bowl. The caption reads: “I was hungry and you formed a committee to discuss the matter. Thank you.” Afghanistan calls for an update: “I am dying, and you imposed sanctions to solve the matter…’
It ought to be displayed in meetings where the U.S. and other Western donors are dealing with what some term a “delicate question”; averting a humanitarian catastrophe in Afghanistan without handing money over to the Taliban.
That’s despite the fact that “last month, the World Food Programme (WFP) and the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF)warned that without immediate life-saving treatment, one million children risked dying from severe acute malnutrition.” By way of comparison, about 71,000 civilians were killed in the unsuccessful 20-year war against the Taliban.
Sanctions intended to hurt the Taliban into changing its ways have effectively “disappeared” billions of dollars in foreign aid lavished on the Western-backed Afghan government. The Taliban is isolated from the global financial system. Afghan banks are paralysed, which seriously impedes relief work by humanitarian organisations.
Deputy U.S. Treasury secretary Wally Adeyemo told the Senate Banking Committee in October: “We believe that it’s essential that we maintain our sanctions against the Taliban but at the same time find ways for legitimate humanitarian assistance to get to the Afghan people.”.
Given the record of the efficacy of sanctions, that’s seriously malnourishing the definition of “essential”.
MORE IRRITANT THAN DETERRENT
Sanctions are a debateable weapon at best.
The Trump administration’s “maximum pressure” policy to curb Iran’s nuclear ambitions was built on crippling sanctions. The Washington Post recently cited unnamed Israeli security sources as saying the policy failed.
Regimes targeted by sanctions can and do use them as scapegoats for the suffering their corrupt and often brutal rule imposes on their citizens, which the strictures are allegedly intended to ultimately relieve. Sanctions only really bother dictatorial rulers when they bite so deep that the populace has nothing to lose by rebelling.
A case in point were UN embargoes on Saddam Hussein’s regime. In dozens of reporting trips to Iraq, I never met or even saw a hungry or in any way deprived senior government official. The ruling clique contrived devious ways to get whatever they wanted. The most ubiquitous was persuading foreign companies doing sanctions-regulated business to pad the bills and pass on the difference.
The 18th century German dramatist Friedrich Schiller summed it up neatly: “The rich become richer and the poor become poorer is a cry heard throughout the whole civilized world.”
Widespread economic sanctions, boycotts and private divestment imposed on South Africa during the 1980s are often cited as major contributing factors to ending apartheid. Having lived in and reported on South Africa for prolonged periods from the early 1970s to the mid-1990s, I tend to agree with the view that the pressure of organised opposition, both outside and inside the country played a larger role.
The willingness of Black activists to face the brutality of the South African security forces wore the authorities and the economy down. Intensive foreign Press coverage brought the ferocity of the struggle into the homes of people who otherwise paid little attention to South Africa.
The effect helped compel Western governments to ratchet up diplomatic pressure, which ultimately hurt as much if not more than sanctions.
A BETTER WAY TO SOLVE THINGS?
I’ve reported on wars, famine, drought and concomitant refugee crises so dire they made me weep. I’ve stood alongside seasoned war cameramen with tears oozing out from under their viewfinder eyepiece as they recorded human misery. To the Taliban and Western politicians arguing and posturing over policy and ideology while innocent people suffer, we offer Mercutio’s curse from Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet: “A plague o’ both your houses!”
Negotiations between the Taliban and Western nations allied to the U.S. stutter on in the luxury of Qatar. Delegates have access to anything their palettes desire at the press of a room service button.
Perhaps they’d have better focus if they had to watch the delicate balance of a child on the brink of dying of starvation, skin hanging in folds from bones without flesh, eyes wide with fear and incomprehension, too weak even to cry.
Failing that, how about putting the negotiators up in a mudbrick building with no heat, electricity, running water or proper sanitation, sitting on the floor and fed on half rations occasionally supplied by an aid agency until they resolve the issue at hand? Any bets on how long it would take?
No doubt the Afghans could hold out longer. They did after all fight with next to nothing and live in caves for the twenty years it took them to regain power. Maybe that’s part of their excuse for being willing to sacrifice children on the altar of politics.
I wonder what the West’s excuse might be?--