Though the start of 2024 may have signaled the beginning of a new year, Afghanistan continues to endure the decades-long denial of its sovereignty by the United States. U.S.-led regime change to produce subservient leadership to fall in line with the militaristic and capitalist aims of the collective West continues to be of utmost importance, especially as the U.S. empire decays and its New Cold War on China escalates. Countries like Afghanistan and Haiti, in key geographic locations for U.S. imperialist aims, are continuously denied self-determination and thus subject to ongoing destabilization efforts that produce exploitation, oppression, and death.
There are indications that U.S.-supported groups, including the National Resistance Front (NRF), are attempting to destabilize the Taliban government militarily. Ahmad Massoud, leader of the NRF, has requested help from the United States while being hosted by Washington DC think tanks as part of the organization's bid to depose the Taliban. In October 2023, Massoud even indicated the NRF sought help from Israel. In March 2024, the NRF ramped up attacks with bombings in Kabul, a departure from assessments a year prior that the NRF had been defeated by the Taliban. The new attacks come after reports that neighboring Tajikistan is playing host to a majority of former Afghan officials and opposition leaders, including the NRF, as well as allegations by the Taliban that Tajikistan is hosting ISIS to infiltrate Afghanistan militarily. The United States has also offered support to recent Pakistani airstrikes on Afghan territory, which killed at least five women and three children. All of this comes despite the Doha peace agreement signed between the United States and the Taliban in 2020.
While international recognition of the Taliban government has often been withheld on the grounds of the Taliban’s treatment of women, U.S. Special Representative to Afghanistan, Thomas West, recently indicated that their primary reason for punitive measures against the Taliban is that the United States believes the Taliban are not doing enough to comply with U.S. security interests in Afghanistan. However, 40 years of U.S.-led war in Afghanistan created the same terror groups, like ISIS-K, who claimed responsibility for the recent attack in Moscow which left 139 people dead, that Thomas West now uses to justify policies of collective punishment against the Afghan people. The U.S. State Department wields the power to decide when the Taliban have met their security obligations.
The United States continues to hold more than $7 billion of Afghanistan’s sovereign assets seized in 2021, a major factor behind the sharp subsequent economic decline that a recent United Nations Development Program (UNDP) study found is disproportionately affecting women and children. The seizure of assets combined with both U.S. and UN sanctions–ostensibly only targeting the Taliban–have hurt ordinary Afghans and aid organizations, affirmed by US-aligned rights groups and media outlets. The same UNDP report found that 69 percent of Afghans “do not have adequate resources for basic subsistence living,” while an estimated 15.8 million Afghans–including nearly 8 million children–are expected to experience “acute food insecurity” by early 2024.
Meanwhile, a U.S.-controlled “Afghan Fund” possessing $3.5 billion of the $7 billion in Afghan assets seized by the U.S. has indicated that none of these funds have been spent, are planned to be spent, or will ever be used to provide humanitarian or development assistance, according to congressional testimony by SIGAR (Office of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction) on January 4, 2024. This gross enactment of economic warfare against the Afghan people echoes the imperialist treatment inflicted upon Iran, Venezuela, and Russia – countries that have also faced deadly sanctions and the U.S. seizure of their national reserves.
ADDITIONAL READINGS AND RESOURCES
“China’s Special Envoy on Afghan affairs urges US to unfreeze Afghanistan assets”
February 20, 2024 by Zhao Yusha & Cao Siqi for Global Times
China's special envoy on Afghan affairs Yue Xiaoyong once again urged the US to unfreeze the $7 billion Washington holds of Afghanistan's overseas assets and lift its unilateral sanctions. Yue's comments came after a two-day international meeting on Afghanistan that ended on Monday in Doha, capital of Qatar.
Return to Afghanistan: An ex-Guantanamo Detainee Confronts Trauma
February 12, 2024 by Michael McEvoy and Horia El Hadad for Al Jazeera
In a new documentary titled “Return to Afghanistan: An ex-Guantanamo Detainee Confronts Trauma” by Al Jazeera, the founder of the international organization CAGE, Moazzam Begg, returns to Afghanistan for the first time since the U.S./NATO withdrawal. In Afghanistan, Begg advocates for the freedom of Muhammad Rahim, the last Afghan held in Guantanamo Bay. He also confronts the trauma he suffered at the hands of the U.S./NATO military forces.
“Afghans stave off starvation in the face of economic sanctions”
September 2, 2023, by Abdulkader Sinno for East Asia Forum
“The United States and its allies are in part responsible for bringing Afghanistan to thepoint of starvation…The West’s biggest contribution to Afghanistan’s food insecurity is the U.S. sanctions onAfghan banks. Sanctionsprevent Afghans from having a normal working economy, hamper remittances and dramatically increase the cost of importing food.”