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 folks’s primary rights, specifically these of ladies and women.
In doing so, they use the same vocabulary, saying that because the Taliban “seized the ability” on 15 August 2021 the whole lot has collapsed. Should not or not it’s extra correct to say that the ability was “knowingly” “delivered” to them by america of America following negotiations between the 2 events underneath Donald Trump’s administration?
Different statements speak about 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’ large navy 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 financial system into “free fall” as outlined by the UN Emergency Reduction 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 folks – round 60% of the whole inhabitants?
Have they in a single yr pushed over 6 million Afghans away to neighbouring international locations like Pakistan and Iran?
Then, how come that “Over one yr after the Taliban takeover, an estimated 24.4 million folks – 59 per cent of the inhabitants in Afghanistan – are depending on worldwide help and emergency reduction of their day-to-day lives,” as said by the Worldwide Group for Migration (IOM)?
“Since August 2021, almost all Afghans have plunged into poverty and the nation has been going through 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 way in which: weren’t america who helped, funded –and armed– the Taliban “average” 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 change for defense?
Operation “Enduring Freedom”
Regardless of the case is, the Afghan struggle narrative also needs to remind us of different “nice achievements” made in the course of 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 earnings as did the enormous weapons trade. And the strategic idea of “struggle on terror” has undoubtedly been settled.
One other under-reported struggle trophy
Anyway, there appear to be different under-reported “nice achievements.” One in all them seems to be Afghanistan’s treasure of treasured mineral assets that the expertise and struggle enterprise wants.
Simply see this: the 2019 official report: Mining Sector Roadmap, revealed by Afghanistan’s Ministry of Mines and Petroleum , and launched by the then Afghan president Mohammad Ashraf Ghani, states the next, amongst different information:
– Afghanistan has “in depth” mineral assets, 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 assets… 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 assets;
– 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 revealed in 2019, i.e., whereas america and allies had been nonetheless ruling the nation.
Too many questions left unanswered
Simply check out what an excellent analyst and Nobel Peace Laureate, John Scales Avery, wrote in his latest must-read article: Making Cash from Conflict.
“If the intention 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,” mentioned Scales Avery, chairman of each the Danish Nationwide Pugwash Group and the Danish Peace Academy.
“However since the true intention is to provide a state of perpetual struggle, thus rising the earnings 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 true purpose, perpetual struggle,” mentioned Scales Avery.
Now again to the greater than a trillion {dollars} price of Afghanistan’s mineral assets –these which are a lot required by the enormous expertise and different enterprise: would it not be too naive to attach the dots?
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