US Destroyed Afghanistan with drugs now controls it's money

[Anthea]

16 million children sleep hungry

According to UNICEF, nearly 2.3 million children in Afghanistan will face acute malnutrition in 2023

On Thursday, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) warned of a "children's crisis" in Afghanistan, with roughly 16 million children undernourished.

Fran Equiza, UNICEF's Afghanistan representative, told reporters that clean water to quench their thirst is not available, nor are blankets to cover themselves with to sleep.

The Taliban's return to power in Afghanistan on August 15, 2021, after the US withdrew from the country, was followed by a halt in foreign financial support, and has left the war-torn country in an economic, humanitarian, and human rights crisis.

In February, a federal judge ruled that the relatives of 9/11 victims cannot lay their hands on $3.5 billion in funds belonging to Afghanistan's central bank.

The assets were illegally frozen on August 15, 2021, the day the Taliban entered Kabul concurrently with the hasty withdrawal of US occupation forces from Afghanistan. Later, US President Joe Biden stated that he would have the $7 billion in illegally frozen funds split between Afghan humanitarian aid and what he called American victims of "terrorism", including 9/11 families.

None of those responsible for the attacks of September 11 were Afghan.

At the time, demonstrations erupted in Kabul in protest to Biden’s order to appropriate $3.5 billion that belong to the struggling Afghan people. The step was slammed as a showcase of theft and US moral decline by top Taliban officials.

It is worth noting that using the 9/11 attacks as a pretext, then-president George W Bush launched a brutal invasion of Afghanistan, resulting in the two decades of war on Afghanistan.

According to Equiza, nearly 1.6 million Afghan children are stuck in child labor at home, on the streets, in farms, mines, and stores, while 2.3 million are estimated to suffer from malnutrition in 2023.

"Children as young as six are in dangerous conditions to help their parents put a little food on the table," he explained.

"Too many live in fear of violence, or early marriage. Too many are burdened by the weight of a dual responsibility," he said. "Too many people have forgotten that Afghanistan is a children's crisis."

https://english.almayadeen.net/news/hea ... -afghanist

[Anthea]

Click Image to Enlarge:

Opium Plantations Destroyed

Abdul strikes the heads of poppies as hard as he can while holding an AK-47 assault rifle on his left shoulder and a long stick in his right hand. The stalks and sap from the poppy bulb both flutter in the air, emitting the characteristic, strong aroma of opium in its unprocessed state

Abdul and a dozen other guys quickly destroy the poppy crop that had overtaken the little field. The armed men then board a pickup truck and proceed to the following farm while donning shalwar kameez (a traditional Afghan tunic with loose-fitting trousers), the majority of whom have long beards.

We were given a rare opportunity to accompany the guys on one of their patrols to destroy poppy farming. The men are members of a Taliban anti-narcotics unit in the eastern Nangarhar region of Afghanistan. The men were insurgency combatants who were engaged in a conflict to grab control of the nation less than two years ago. Now that they have prevailed, they are dominating and carrying out their leader’s commands.

Haibatullah Akhundzada, the supreme leader of the Taliban, issued a directive in April 2022 outlawing the growing of the poppy, which is used to make opium, a crucial component of the narcotic heroin. Anyone breaking the law would have their pitch destroyed and face Sharia-compliant penalties.

A Taliban spokesman told the BBC that the prohibition was put in place because it violates their religious convictions and is necessary to prevent the spread of opium, which is obtained from poppy seed capsules. More than 80% of the opium in the world used to be produced in Afghanistan. In Europe, opium from Afghanistan accounts for 95% of the heroin sold.

The BBC has now been to Afghanistan and utilized satellite analysis to investigate the impact of direct intervention on the cultivation of opium poppies. The Taliban leaders seem to have had more success than anyone else in eradicating farming.

We discovered a sharp decline in poppy growth in the main opium-producing areas; according to one expert, annual cultivation may be 80% lower than previous year. Poppies have been replaced with less lucrative wheat crops, and many farmers report experiencing financial hardship.

poppy growth

In order to view the situation firsthand, we travelled to the provinces of Nangarhar, Kandahar, and Helmand. We rode on muddy, winding roads and walked miles across agriculture and rocky terrain.

The 2022 opium harvest, which climbed by a third over 2021, was exempt from the Taliban directive, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).

But this year is a lot different. The data we observed on the ground is supported by aerial photography.

David Mansfield, a recognized authority on the drug trade in Afghanistan, collaborates with Alcis, a UK company that specialized in satellite analysis.

“Cultivation is probably going to be less than 20% of what it was in 2022. According to him, the scale of the reduction will be unparalleled.

Despite the fact that most farmers have cooperated with the restriction, Taliban insurgents have been damaging their crops.

Bottom Line

The US invested billions of dollars in Afghanistan to combat opium production and trafficking in the hopes of reducing the Taliban’s income. LIE

They conducted raids on drug manufacturing facilities, burned opium supplies, and carried out airstrikes on opium fields in Taliban-controlled areas.

However, the BBC observed opium growing openly in regions under the administration of the US-backed former Afghan regime prior to the Taliban takeover in 2021.

For the time being, the Taliban seem to have succeeded in Afghanistan where the West failed. However, it is uncertain how long they can maintain it.

According to Mike Trace, a sharp decline in opium cultivation in Afghanistan is likely to have a significant positive impact on heroin addiction in the UK and the rest of Europe.

https://www.tycoonstory.com/opium-poppy ... -on-drugs/

[Anthea]

Click Image to Enlarge:


Opium cultivation shrunk by 80 percent

Afghanistan once supplied 82 percent of the world's opium

A report by Niko Vorobyov for The Spectator details the drastic changes that are taking place in the narcotic industry amid the Taliban's efforts to phase out the illicit narcotics trade, particularly with regard to the production of morphine and opium-related products.

According to the report, it took only one year for the Taliban to eradicate about 80 percent of opium cultivation, something which the UK and the US were both either unable or unwilling to fulfill when troops occupied the country

"They sure showed us up," Vorobyov writes. "In 2001, Tony Blair said stopping Afghan heroin from reaching British shores was one of the main reasons for sending in troops to oust the Taliban."

"The Taliban, it seems, achieved what two decades of our occupation could not," he adds.

As Afghanistan once supplied 82 percent of the world's opium, does that mean that there will be fewer drugs will be circulating in the market, he asks?

The obvious answer is no. Research has shown us that when one supplier is eliminated, another will quickly fill the shoes, and oftentimes the quality or strength is unknown -- leading to higher instances of drug overdoses.

Moreover, the drug trafficking of narcotics was strategic in disrupting communities that were anti-Status Quo, such as Black resistance movements in the US during the 1960s, or the hippies who voiced their opposition against the Vietnam War.

The Taliban attempted to implement rehabilitation programs via "prison-like detox centers," but the attempt apparently failed as addicts returned to the streets.

With less morphine being produced, traffickers are opting for the production of stronger and more lethal alternatives, such as fentanyl or tranq dope.

Besides having a strong potential for dependency and abuse, the production of these new drugs involves fewer risks as they get to be produced synthetically in labs.

In sum, the Taliban's crackdown on poppy farmers may soon aggravate the drug crisis, and cause more harm than good to the West.

https://english.almayadeen.net/news/pol ... an:-the-sp

[Anthea]

Click Image to Enlarge:


Taliban steps to free women

Afghanistan's supreme leader argues that the Taliban succeeded in restoring the country's independence and strengthening "brotherhood and national unity" while abolishing "all kinds of prejudices such as race, language, and religion."

Afghan supreme leader Hibatullah Akhundzada claimed on Sunday that the Taliban is allegedly working to improve the status of women in the country through "concrete measures" and that they have begun to be considered "free and dignified" human beings.

"Under the rule of the Islamic Emirate, concrete measures have been taken to save women from many traditional oppressions, including forced marriages, and their...rights have been protected ... By issuing the six-article decree on women's rights, the status of women as a free and dignified human being has been restored," Akhundzada said in his statement.

He further argued that the Taliban succeeded in restoring the country's independence and strengthening "brotherhood and national unity" while abolishing "all kinds of prejudices such as race, language, and religion."

Back in December 2022, Afghanistan's Ministry for Higher Education said that the Taliban authorities implemented a nationwide ban on university education for females, a move that came just three months after thousands of women sat for entrance examinations for higher education across the country.

"You all are informed to immediately implement the mentioned order of suspending the education of females until further notice," said a statement signed by the Minister for Higher Education, Neda Mohammad Nadeem, delivered to all public and private academic institutions.

A week later, its neighbor Iran condemned their decision and an Iranian Foreign Ministry official expressed Iran’s readiness to provide university education for Afghan women.

https://english.almayadeen.net/news/pol ... oppression

[Anthea]

Painful lessons Afghanistan mayhem

A telling review details the faults and misgivings of the US administration that led to the most chaotic withdrawal and evacuation efforts in the last decade

According to a State Department report issued Friday, the Biden administration is largely to blame due to the bureaucratic lethargy and lack of awareness during the withdrawal of the US from Afghanistan.

The review criticizes the handling of the most catastrophic evacuation since Saigon and details how Biden and former President Trump underestimated the military hasty withdrawal's effect on the US-backed Afghan government at the time.

Additionally, standard summer diplomatic rotations in the weeks leading up to the Taliban taking over Kabul left the US evacuation in the hands of personnel who had only been in the country for a few days or weeks.

The review added that the Taliban assumed power following the disastrous withdrawal that killed dozens of Afghans and at least 13 US service members and severely decreased Biden's approval numbers.

Despite killing tens of thousands of civilians during their occupation of the country, US soldiers opened fire on the crowd outside the Hamid Karzai International Airport, killing several civilians, including women and children

According to a senior State Department official who spoke to reporters anonymously, “What this report reveals is that in crises that are longer duration, that are particularly complicated, that occur at a large scale, that impact populations well beyond the official American community, we haven’t over time had the appropriate structure and resources available to provide that foundation, a steady, constant set of capabilities that we can draw on when we’re suddenly confronting something at scale."

The report details that while the US military had begun planning for a full evacuation of Kabul "for some time" before August 2021, the State Department's preparations for the evacuations were "hindered by the fact that it was unclear who in the Department had the lead."

Findings add that senior US officials gave “insufficient senior-level consideration of worst-case scenarios."

Several officials expressed displeasure with what they thought to be a lack of attention in Washington to how dire the situation of the US forces was in Afghanistan as the Taliban took over in an earlier review of the evacuation conducted by the US military.

Navy Rear Adm. Peter Vasely, the top US commander on the ground during the operation, expressed that “if policymakers had paid attention to the indicators of what was happening on the ground," then US troops would have been much more capable of handling the evacuation situation.

State Department officials have shrugged off evaluations like Vasely's. Jalina Porter, a State Department spokeswoman, stated last year that “cherry-picked comments do not reflect the months of work that were well underway” and the total work that diplomats put to make the evacuation effort easy.

John Kirby also dismissed the operation's instability, stating as recently as April that he didn't "buy the whole argument of chaos" during the operation.

"It was tough in the first few hours," Kirby remarked at the time when the White House informed Congress that the evacuation should have been ordered sooner. “You would expect it to be; there was nobody at the airport and certainly no Americans. It took time to get in there," he said.

Earlier this year, Afghan refugees protested in Pakistan's capital on January 13, as an American program to assist in the relocation of at-risk Afghans fleeing after the hasty US withdrawal stalled.

https://english.almayadeen.net/news/pol ... hanistan-m

[Anthea]

Kabul’s drug rehabilitation center

phpBB [video]

Afghanistan has one of the world’s highest drug addiction rates. According to the Taliban, there are an estimated four million drug addicts across the country

Babrak, a former mujahideen fighter, used to be one of them. Now, he is committed to supporting addicts to detox in one of the capital’s under-resourced drug rehabilitation hospitals.

Since the Taliban took power in 2021, international aid has been withdrawn and public services are on the brink of collapse. Babrak and a handful of medical staff struggle to offer a line of hope as the Taliban's anti-drug policies are put into action.

A Second Shot is a film by Marcel Mettelsiefen

Direct Link:
https://youtu.be/PHVGL1BDXXU

[Anthea]

Click Image to Enlarge:


US holds on to Afghan funds

The United States conditioned that in order for Afghanistan to access its sovereign funds previously frozen in Switzerland, the US-destroyed country must replace current officials in charge of the central bank with "professional bankers" and introduce financial "reforms", Reuters reported on Friday citing senior US Treasury officials

Following an American-funded audit of the country's central bank, Washington decided not to allow the return of $3.5 billion belonging to Afghanistan, which are frozen based on US orders in a Geneva-based trust fund.

The results of the audit were not released nor disclosed, sparking criticism over the transparency of the decision that will critically affect the country, while some experts considered that this proves that Washington's move is politically driven and not based on concrete facts.

The United States has prohibited Afghanistan's access to $7 billion dollars of its foreign assets, half of which were seized by the US Federal Reserve while the rest is frozen in a Swiss account. US President Joe Biden has been making efforts since to illegally hand over half of the frozen funds in New York out to 9/11 American victims.

Following Biden's attempts, the Taliban slammed Washington's measures describing them as theft, saying that they exhibit the moral decline of the United States.

"The theft of blocked money belonging to the people of Afghanistan by the United States, as well as taking possession of it, is a showcase of the human and moral decline of the country and people," a spokesperson for the Taliban political office said then.

Restrictions on the funds were imposed in August 2021, the day the Taliban entered Kabul concurrently with the hasty withdrawal of US occupation forces from Afghanistan.

Da Afghan Bank DAB (central bank) must show that it is free "from political influence and interference," said a Treasury official. DAB must also show that it has "adequate" governance to prevent money laundering and financing of "terrorism", as well as install a "reputable" independent monitor.

"Our assessment of DAB remains unchanged,” said one of the US officials.

Saying that the latest audit is a "preliminary assessment", the Treasury official said its "limitations" suggested that "more comprehensive third-party assessment efforts may be needed."

Shah Mehrabi, an Afghan-American economics professor who chairs DAB's Audit Committee and co-chairs the Afghan Fund board, stated that the audit - which he has seen - was completed last March and is currently with the US State Department.

The audit results will be taken into consideration once they are disclosed, Mehrabi and his co-chair, Anwar ul-Haq Ahady, a former DAB governor and former finance minister, told Reuters.

Millions of Afghan families are struggling to survive due to severe shortages in food and basic necessities fueled by an economic crash and a humanitarian crisis, provoked by the United States imposed global isolation on the impoverished nation.

Former Afghan President Hamid Karzai revealed to The Washington Post last year that the United States was directly involved in the corruption in the country, admitting that he also was part of it.

"[I take] full responsibility for the corruption and bribes in the delivery of services… But the big contracts, big corruption, in hundreds of millions of dollars or millions of dollars, was clearly a United States of America thing," Karzai told the newspaper.

https://english.almayadeen.net/news/pol ... blames-aud

[Anthea]

War Has Ended, Not the Misery

As per a UNHCR Report, over 28 million individuals in the current year require humanitarian assistance

The end of August marks the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, causing the war to end but not the misery. After the embarrassing and chaotic withdrawal, the United States abandoned the war-torn country, causing a massive humanitarian crisis. Numerous challenges surfaced in the humanitarian, economic, political, and counterterrorism domains.

The unplanned U.S. withdrawal left a huge security vacuum, which led to increased violence and instability in the country. The Afghan security forces collapsed, reflecting the loopholes in the overall system. The deteriorating security situation led to displacement and a humanitarian crisis, worsened in the last two years. Soon after the Taliban takeover, Afghanistan's economy faced myriad challenges as foreign aid declined.

What is the present state of affairs?

According to recent warnings from the UN food agency, Afghanistan's population is facing a severe food crisis, with nearly 6 million Afghans in dire need of food aid. Who is responsible for this crisis? These are the consequences of decades-long U.S./NATO presence in Afghanistan, which never prioritized the agricultural sector.

Afghanistan’s economy depended on Agriculture for years, but it remained one of the most overlooked aspects during the last 20 years. Consequently, as soon as US forces left, the aid was suspended, and an ordinary man faced a severe food crisis. (during US occupation the farmers were encouraged to grow poppies rather than food - Taliban has stopped the drug trade)

As per a UNHCR Report, over 28 million individuals in the current year require humanitarian assistance. This represents a significant increase compared to the 18.4 million people in need at the beginning of 2021. This assistance can include various forms of support, including food, shelter, water, cash aid, and help with health or sanitation needs.

As per many experts, the Taliban's management of the Afghan economy has been more effective than anticipated despite some mistakes. However, the Afghan economy appears to be stuck in a persistent state of low-level stability, leaving the majority of Afghans impoverished and reliant on humanitarian aid. Moreover, the economic difficulties in Afghanistan have led to a significant deterioration in living conditions.

The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) has urged to continue humanitarian assistance in Afghanistan alongside investments in long-term solutions. Necephor Mghendi, IFRC’s Head of Delegation for Afghanistan, said: “The humanitarian situation is becoming harsher”. Moreover, Afghanistan is facing its third consecutive year of drought and struggling with economic challenges that have worsened the ongoing humanitarian crisis.

The international community’s financial restrictions, asset freeze, and sanctions have undoubtedly fueled a humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan. Roza Otunbayeva, the Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Afghanistan, also recognized that the Taliban generates substantial revenue. They have taken measures to reduce corruption and poppy cultivation. This suggests that the group has sufficient financial resources to sustain itself. So, imposing sanctions and isolating policies have not succeeded in weakening the financial strength of the Taliban. Instead, it has only harmed the people of Afghanistan.

What needs to be done now

Interestingly, during the last two years, there has been a marked improvement in internal security in Afghanistan, with a drastic reduction in violent deaths. According to the Uppsala Conflict Data Program, Afghanistan endured the world's bloodiest conflict between 2018 and 2021. Moreover, after 2004, this was the first time the conflict did not escalate to the level of war intensity. The world should keep collaborating with the Taliban to counter and eliminate the menace of terrorism from the region.

More importantly, the Taliban must be more proactive about human rights, particularly women's rights, education, and all-inclusive government. Taliban should review their ban policies against women's basic requirements, including access to parks, gyms, beauty salons, universities, and jobs. The United Nations has labeled these bans a significant barrier to the Taliban's recognition as Afghanistan's legitimate government, reducing Western aid and support. The revisions on bans will relax Western restrictions against the Taliban, paving the way for more cooperation between the international world and the Taliban.

Moreover, there is a lesson for West here. Rather than overlook Afghanistan's humanitarian crisis and strangling the country with sanctions, they should constructively engage with the Taliban. The recent appointment of Maulvi Abdul Kabir as the new caretaker Prime Minister of Afghanistan in May 2023, replacing Mullah Mohammad Hasan Akhund, could signal a willingness on the part of the Taliban to engage in dialogue and openness.

The international community, mainly the West, should realize that their resistance to engagement with the Taliban is harming the Afghan people. In the past, the West, particularly the U.S., ignored many chances to engage with the Taliban, and they should not repeat this mistake now. An ordinary Afghan citizen should not suffer anymore due to global politics and policies.

Time for both war and misery to end

https://english.almayadeen.net/articles ... ing-strugg