MADRID, Sep 06 (IPS) – Each mainstream media, worldwide our bodies and human rights defenders proceed to rightly denounce the Taliban’s inhuman abuses towards the Afghan individuals’s fundamental rights, specifically these of ladies and women.
In doing so, they use an analogous vocabulary, saying that because the Taliban “seized the ability” on 15 August 2021 every thing has collapsed. Should not or not it’s extra correct to say that the ability was “knowingly” “delivered” to them by the US of America following negotiations between the 2 events below Donald Trump’s administration?
Different statements discuss how the Taliban’s regime has in just some months erased with a stroke of a pen all of the “nice achievements” revamped 20 years of US and allies’ huge army assaults on Afghanistan’s unarmed inhabitants.
Has all this occurred in simply 12 months?
How come the Taliban managed in simply weeks to push Afghanistan’s economic system into “free fall” as outlined by the UN Emergency Aid Coordinator, already in December 2021 –that’s solely 4 months because the energy was handed to them?
How come that in such a comparatively quick time the Taliban have hurled into starvation as many as 23 million individuals – round 60% of the full inhabitants?
Have they in a single 12 months pushed over 6 million Afghans away to neighbouring nations like Pakistan and Iran?
Then, how come that “Over one 12 months after the Taliban takeover, an estimated 24.4 million individuals – 59 per cent of the inhabitants in Afghanistan – are depending on worldwide assist and emergency aid of their day-to-day lives,” as acknowledged by the Worldwide Group for Migration (IOM)?
“Since August 2021, practically all Afghans have plunged into poverty and the nation has been dealing with the chance of systemic collapse,” states IOM.
Add to this the reiterated UN disparate appeals for funding to supply “lifesaving” help to 21 million Afghans or 50% of the entire inhabitants.
By the best way: weren’t the US who helped, funded –and armed– the Taliban “reasonable” predecessors, over the 70s and 80s, to expel the Soviet Union’s troops from Afghanistan?
Weren’t the US and allies conscious that the “narco lords” in Afghanistan, the world’s largest opium producer, have additionally been offering cash and weapons to the Taliban in trade for cover?
Operation “Enduring Freedom”
Regardless of the case is, the Afghan conflict narrative must also remind us of different “nice achievements” made throughout the two-decade-long “Enduring Freedom” operation launched towards this nation by the then US president George W. Bush and allies.
Has this Operation Enduring Freedom actually introduced meals, well being, training, security, democracy, stability… and freedom?
Whatever the arguments used to “justify” them, wars are additionally a “good” enterprise.
Certainly new weapons have been examined; killing-drones perfected, troops casualties lessened; fully-equipped non-public armies made huge income as did the large weapons business. And the strategic idea of “conflict on terror” has positively been settled.
One other under-reported conflict trophy
Anyway, there appear to be different under-reported “nice achievements.” One in every of them seems to be Afghanistan’s treasure of valuable mineral sources that the expertise and conflict enterprise wants.
Simply see this: the 2019 official report: Mining Sector Roadmap, printed by Afghanistan’s Ministry of Mines and Petroleum , and launched by the then Afghan president Mohammad Ashraf Ghani, states the next, amongst different info:
– Afghanistan has “in depth” mineral sources, positioned in each province of the nation;
– Afghanistan has world-class deposits of iron, ore, copper, gold, rare-earth minerals, and a number of different pure sources… And oil and fuel;
– Different minerals embody aluminium, gem stones; lead, zinc, mercury; chromite; sulphur; hydrocarbons; asbestos; marble, lapis lazuli, emeralds and rubies; …
– Afghanistan holds greater than a trillion {dollars} price of mineral sources;
– Afghanistan “should’‘ leverage the experience of the “non-public sector“ to harness the potential of its mineral sector, the official report highlights.
This Afghan authorities official report was printed in 2019, i.e., whereas the US and allies have been nonetheless ruling the nation.
Too many questions left unanswered
Simply check out what a superb analyst and Nobel Peace Laureate, John Scales Avery, wrote in his latest must-read article: Making Cash from Conflict.
“If the purpose of the “Conflict on Terror” had been to rid the world of the specter of terrorism, acts like unlawful assassination utilizing drones would have been counterproductive, since they create many extra terrorists than they destroy,” stated Scales Avery, chairman of each the Danish Nationwide Pugwash Group and the Danish Peace Academy.
“However since the actual purpose is to supply a state of perpetual conflict, thus growing the income of the military-industrial complicated, such strategies are the most effective possible. Urinating on Afghan corpses or burning the Koran or murderous night-time raids on civilian properties additionally assist to advertise the actual aim, perpetual conflict,” stated Scales Avery.
Now again to the greater than a trillion {dollars} price of Afghanistan’s mineral sources –these which can be a lot required by the large expertise and different enterprise: wouldn’t it be too naive to attach the dots?
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