Daily Archives: November 25, 2021

A senior Red Cross official has voiced anger at the continuation of sanctions and freezes in international aid to Afghanistan, preventing basic services from being delivered to the population.

Dominik Stillhart, the director of operations for the International Committee of the Red Cross, said in a statement Monday that he is livid after a six-day day visit to field hospitals, where he said he witnessed first-hand suffering of Afghans.

When youre standing in the pediatric ward in Kandahars largest hospital, looking into the empty eyes of hungry children and the anguished faces of desperate parents, the situation is absolutely infuriating, Stillhartsaid.

Earlier this month, the United Nations warned that more than half of Afghanistans estimated 40 million population is likely to go hungry this winter unless more funds are forthcoming from donors. The World Food Program said that fuel costs are up, food prices are soaring, fertilizer is more expensive, and all of this feeds into the unfolding Afghan crisis.

Stillhart said the situation is angering, given that civilians suffering is man-made and the result of the international communitys choice to impose sanctions on the Taliban regime, which assumed power in Afghanistan in August.

The return to power of the Islamist Taliban after the withdrawal of U.S.-led foreign troops has plunged the country into an economic crisis and increased Afghan humanitarian needs to unprecedented levels, which stem from years of war and a prolonged widespread drought.

The international community has refused to grant diplomatic recognition to the Taliban government mainly over human rights concerns, especially those of women and girls, under the Islamist movements rule. The Taliban have banned women from most employment opportunities and restricted education for most women and girls.

The absence of legitimacy led to suspension of several billions of dollars in annual foreign assistance to Kabul and blocked the Talibans access to about $10 billion in Afghan assets, mostly held in the U.S. Federal Reserve. The sanctions have made it extremely difficult for the Taliban to pay salaries or import essential goods.

Stillhart said that recent resolutions from the U.N. and general economic sanctions are causing donors to rethink, and pause, their contributions to humanitarian efforts in Afghanistan, which can deny live-saving assistance to civilians.

In order to prevent the collapse of Afghanistans public health system, the ICRC on Monday began supporting 18 regional and provincial medical facilities, including running costs and medical supplies. The ICRC is planning to support the facilities for six months.

The agency also began paying employees salaries on Monday, Reuters reported.

In his statement, Stillhart said cases of malnutrition, pneumonia and dehydration at the Mirwais Regional Hospital in Kandahar have doubled from mid-August to September.

Stillhart said the future of medical care and education in Afghanistan are dependent upon international support.

States must engage with Afghanistan. This is the only way to prevent a total collapse of essential services like health care and education. Political considerations should not interfere with humanitarian action, Stillhart said.

Analysts say Washington and other Western governments have few good options in Afghanistan: They can either try to work with the Taliban, and in effect collude with human rights violations, or watch the worsening crisis from afar and see 20 years of development work reversed.

Stillhart pushed donors to find creative solutions to save the lives of millions of Afghans.

He warned that the economic sanctions "meant to punish those in power in Kabul are instead freezing millions of people across Afghanistan out of the basics they need to survive, according to an Agence France-Presse report.

He told AFP that "sanctions on banking services are sending the economy into free-fall and holding up bilateral aid."

In October, the heads of government and foreign ministers from the worlds 20 leading economies the G-20 agreed at a video summit to examine how to inject more aid into Afghanistan, while preventing funds being controlled by the Taliban and used for political purposes rather than humanitarian.

The European Union announced during the summit a $1.15 billion aid package for Afghanistan to avert a major humanitarian and socio-economic collapse.

However, earlier this month, Jan Egeland, secretary general of the humanitarian organization Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), said, The international response to the suffering, immense suffering in Afghanistan and for Afghans and neighboring countries is really pitiful.

There must be an immediate scale up of aid both inside Afghanistan and in neighboring countries like Iran, before the deadly winter cold, he said.

(Ayaz Gul and Jamie Dettmer contributed to this report. Some material for this report came from Reuters and Agence France-Presse.)

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Red Cross Official: Sanctions, Freeze in Donations Add to Afghan Humanitarian Crisis - Voice of America

The writer heads the Sustainable Development Policy Institute.

We have not seen this level of near-universal poverty in any country in recent history, said Ms Kanni Wignaraja, assistant secretary of the United Nations Development Programme, last month, while referring to the deteriorating economic situation of Afghanistan. The UN estimates that the percentage of the Afghan population living below less than $1.90 when the Taliban took over will increase from 50 percent to 97 percent by next summer.

The above shocking numbers were partly due to changing weather patterns, prolonged periods of drought accompanied by above-average temperatures. Food insecurity further worsened after the change in regime in Kabul. According to the World Food Programs (WFP) estimates released in the beginning of this month, three million Afghans were at the brink of famine. Likewise, an equal number of children are malnourished. Another 23 million, in a country of 38 million, faced acute hunger. Out of those, 8.7 million were only one step behind famine: in WFP language, in a state of emergency. Children and women in Afghanistan are the worst affected by this situation. There are four million internally displaced persons in Afghanistan; of them, 80 percent are women and children.

In its recent story, The Economist has described the worsening situation in Afghanistan in these words, Locals report cases of entire families starving to death in their homes. Hospital wards are taking in emaciated children, including 11-year-olds who weigh just 13kg. Poor Afghans are selling their remaining possessions for food. Some are selling their daughters. The misery is as bad in the cities as it is in the countryside. As the winter sets in, the agony will only deepen.

A closer analysis reveals that Western Coalition Forces were merely interested in maintaining a status quo in war-torn Afghanistan during the last two decades. They did nothing to stabilise Afghanistan as a country.

Under twenty years of coalition-supported rule, the Afghan economy did not prove to be much different from its armed forces. Both collapsed without showing any sign of resistance. While a strategic affairs expert can tell you about the armed forces, let me describe why the Afghan economy collapsed after the Talibans victory.

It would not be wrong to say that successive governments in Afghanistan were dependent on foreign aid. Till August 2021 (before the Taliban interim government), Afghanistan used to receive $8.5 billion per annum as foreign aid. That external financing was equal to 45 percent of its GDP, and financed 75 percent of the government budget, including almost all health, education and security spending.

Almost 80 percent of its electricity needs are met through imports from neighbouring countries (from Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Iran). Other essential imports include wheat (from Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Pakistan), fuel (from Iran, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan), and medicines (from India, Pakistan, and Iran). Since America has frozen Afghan assets worth $9 billion, it is unable to pay for its imports.

The Afghan government does not print its local currency and hence is facing a shortage of it. Half a million soldiers and police personnel have lost their jobs, and civil servants, including 220,000 teachers, have gone unpaid for months. Only last week, the Taliban government made partial payments to select civil servants through the meagre revenue collected during the three months of their rule.

The US lists the Taliban as specially designated global terrorists (SDGT) so routing payments through US dollar payment system is fraught with criminal liability. As per the UN Security Councils Resolution 1988 (mandatory implementation by all countries), the Afghan Taliban as an entity are not sanctioned. However, some cabinet members are listed under UNSC 1988. Hence dealing with the Taliban may invoke international sanctions. The US Office for Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) has frozen the assets of the Afghan government. And the Taliban government is yet to be recognised by any country in the world.

Due to the sanctions, Afghanistans commercial banks face difficulties in transactions with correspondent banks and interbank placements. They are at risk of insolvency. Strict withdrawal limits have been imposed on depositors local currency/foreign currency accounts. This has undermined payments for general imports, leading to a shortage of critical imports such as food, fuel and electricity.

The OFAC, while upholding and enforcing US sanctions against the Taliban, the Haqqani Network, and other sanctioned entities, has issued General License (GL) 14 and GL15. Through GL14, the US Treasury will continue to work with financial institutions, international organisations, and the NGO community to ease the flow of critical resources, like agricultural goods, medicine, and other essential supplies, to people in need.

Through GL15, certain transactions related to exporting or re-exporting agricultural commodities, medicine, and medical devices are authorised.

Mexico, Ireland and Norway (UNSC members) and international NGOs support exceptions of humanitarian assistance as part of the UN sanction regime. Likewise, Switzerland, Chad and the Philippines (and a few others) have enacted national legislation to protect humanitarian assistance from material support offences. Despite the backing of the above-mentioned countries, and OFACs GL 14 & 15, routing US dollars funds transfer to Afghanistan is exceedingly complicated.

In September 2021, donors pledged $1 billion in response to the UNs flash appeal for $600 million. However, only one-third of those pledges could materialise. The European Union promised $1.15 billion in October. Yet 300 million euros of that had already been committed, and much of the rest will be provided to Afghanistans neighbours so they may send humanitarian assistance. The WFP requires around $220 million a month to avert a food crisis during the harsh winter months.

Pakistan may face the direct brunt of the evolving humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan. In case of an economic collapse (which may be quite soon under the existing scenario), Pakistan needs to be ready to host up to another one million, mostly non-vaccinated both for Covid-19 and polio, refugees. Sharing its essential imports (wheat, petroleum products, and vaccines) with the refugees would further increase the current account deficit, affecting the value of the rupee versus US dollar and the interest rate. On top of it, Pakistan would have no filter to distinguish foes (members of anti-Pakistan groups) from friends among the refugees. A few thousand miscreants among a half-million peaceful Afghan refugees would be enough to sabotage the peace that the people of Pakistan achieved after braving hundreds of suicide bombers during the last two decades.

The socio-economic security of Pakistan and, most notably, the dignified assistance of Afghan people, are linked with a resumption of foreign aid if not unfreezing of Afghan assets.

No one can disagree with the Western demands for fundamental rights for Afghans. However, punishing the intended beneficiaries and letting them starve to death because their rulers are not respecting their basic rights is akin to throwing the baby out with the bathwater and must be avoided.

The West can follow the Yemeni model, where Houthis the de-facto rulers of Yemen do not enjoy international recognition. However, the international community is funding Yemeni civil servants and the people of Yemen, calling it support to President Hadis government in exile (based in Saudi Arabia).

Finally, we dont have to pay the Taliban to pay the salaries of staffers of basic services delivery departments or take care of food aid in Afghanistan. International NGOs and UN agencies can hire such civil servants as their short-term service providers and pay them directly, bypassing the Taliban. However, a functional banking system is a prerequisite for transferring such aid. The US would have to come up with an innovative solution for that.

Afghans are calling; one hopes the West is paying attention to their miseries.

Twitter: @abidsuleri

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The Afghans are calling - The News International

The Bubonic Plague, also known as the Black Death, wiped out nearly half the population of 14th century Europe. That is the bad news. But the plague was also a major factor in the rise of economic and political freedom.

In fact, a study by Daniel W. Gingerich and Jan P. Vogler of the University of Virginia found that the areas that were hardest hit by the Black Death became more democratic than areas with fewer casualties, an effect that was discernible centuries later.

Their findings are published in an article entitled Pandemics and Political Development:The Electoral Legacy of the Black Death in Germany, in the online academic journal World Politics.They also published an article on their research for general readers at Politico entitled What the 14th Century Plague Tells Us About How Covid Will Change Politics.

Before the plague, the researchers say, the socio-economic structure of medieval Europe consisted of a feudal elite that owned the land, which was worked by peasants tied to the land in a system of serfdom. When the plague killed much of the labor force, the surviving peasants were in such demand that they could command better working conditions, the right to move to better opportunities, and, crucially, compensation in money, rather than just a share of the produce. In the years immediately following the Black Death, the authors write, serfdom collapsed and was replaced by a wage economy based on free labor.

Meanwhile, power was decentralized because the elite was also devastated by the plague. Peasants had to co-ordinate with each other to plan the work, which resulted in an early form of self-government. Villages chose their own leaders by holding elections. Citiestheir populations bolstered by peasant migration from the countryside to take advantage of the new money-based economy elected their own city council members and mayors.

The result was a culture of self-government that did not exist in areas that were largely spared by the Black Death. In those seemingly fortunate regions, serfdom, powerful elites, and the feudal economy persisted, in contrast to the new freedoms and economic prosperity of the regions where the plague proved the most deadly.

Gingerich and Vogler, who focus their research on Germany, say that this culture of self-government, with its values of political and economic freedom, continued even after the Middle Ages, with these regions generally favoring pro-Democratic political parties, and opposing monarchical parties and even, in the 20th century, National Socialism.

I wonder if there is a correlation between the severity of the plague and the regions and cities that embraced the Reformation. The authors look at Wrttemberg as a case study, and that would become a Lutheran city. But the authors dont really go into the religious factors.

They go on to suggest that the COVID pandemic might also have similar democratic effects. They admit that COVID is not at all comparable to the Black Death, with its 70% death rate, in terms of fatalities. Still, COVID has led to a labor shortage, which has driven up wages, though, in the absence of the demographic collapse caused by the plague, the authors conclude that the advantage to workers will probably be temporary.

I would argue, though, that if the Black Plague contributed to decentralized government and the rise of freedom, the COVID epidemic has done the opposite, resulting in a more powerful central government and to to the loss of freedom.

Well talk about that next time, so tune in tomorrow!

Illustration: St. Sebastian pleading for plague victims by Josse Lieferinxe (149-=1499), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

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The Consequences of Plagues and Pandemics (part 1) - Patheos