Freezing Afghan assets brings threat of starvation as winter approaches

What right do Western countries have to hold onto money until Afghanistan proves it won’t be 'a haven for terrorism?' How could the Taliban prove it won’t become one, and how long would that take? Until the first million people starve?

A U.S. Army UH-60 Black Hawk flies over Afghanistan in December 2017. Afghanistan’s domestic economy has virtually collapsed, but there’s enough money in those frozen accounts to pay for imported food that would see 40 million Afghans through the coming winter without many deaths from starvation. So why won’t the U.S. government release it, asks Gwynne Dyer. Photograph courtesy of U.S. Army by John Martinez via Flickr

Opinion

BY GWYNNE DYER

November 8, 2021

LONDON, U.K.—The first snow of the winter will reach Kabul any day now, and the death rate will start to climb: mostly children, at first, but it will not really be the cold that kills them. The cold will only finish the work that malnutrition began months or years ...

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