Women in Afghanistan One-Year After the US Military Withdrawal and the US led Economic War that Continues
According to the Costs of War website, between September 2021, and the 2001 US initiation of military actions, about 243,000 have been killed in the Afghanistan/Pakistan warzone with more than 70,000 Afghan and Pakistani civilians are estimated to have died as a direct result of the war. AFollowing this twenty-year war, the U.S. imposed sanctions after the Taliban regained control of Afghanistan last August (2021).
In early February, 2022 President Joe Biden’s administration moved to block $7 billion in frozen assets that Afghanistan’s central bank held in New York on top of the $2B European leaders have also frozen. Additional sanctions were levied by the US following the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan a year ago this month following the US military withdrawal. As a result, Afghanistan economy faces a total collapse.
The Secretary General of the UN Antonio Guterres describes the situation this way. “Some 95% of (Afghanistan) people do not have enough to eat, and 9 million people are at risk of famine. UNICEF estimates that a million severely malnourished children are on the verge of death, without immediate action.” This in a country of just 40 million people. What can we do to take responsibility for what we have largely created?
Tonight our special guests Masuda Sultan, an Afghan-American women’s rights activist and author who has been working for over 20 years in support of Afghanistan women and girls in education, vocational training and protection from violence, and Dr Mark Weisbrot, Phd in economics and Co-Director of the Center for Economic Policy research in Washington DC, bring Light Into Darkness around the reality facing Afghanistan. Please join us as they describe the conditions in Afghanistan, particularly for women, past and present, the US/West role in affecting those conditions and what we can do to address the problems our foreign policy over the last few decades is largely responsible for creating.