World NewsI see articles about this nearly every week.
What I never seem to find is the Trail of Hunger and Death Behind U.S. Aid Cuts (archive.is). The abysmal Taliban policies towards women end up being used as a flog, seemingly to justify the sanctions that are killing thousands of people - including the 2.4M Afghan girls for whom we're supposed to care about.
Incidentally, while the US continues to punish Afghans years after our two-decade long occupation officially ended, the country's eastern neighbor Pakistan is now in open war over a border dispute, killing still more of the country's vulnerable civilian population via air strikes across the south of the country. This conflict has also gone almost entirely unreported.
USAID is not a famine-prevention program. Its goal is not to save lives. Its leadership is not charged with a charitable mission. It is a tool of the State Department to promote fringe parties, bribe existing governments, and extort opposition parties that have inherited infrastructure laid down by prior administrations.
So about the famine...?
I'm bringing this up not as a gotcha, but to point out that many of these policies people paint with a single coarse brush shockingly do have a postive impact. If it's an outsized one I imagine is unanswerable, but perhaps going forward we can all celebrate the deaths of programs like this a little less and lament the cessation of what good was done a little more.
So about the famine…?
We had a program that bought out local communities with food-aid when we were occupying the country militarily.
And then we yanked all the aid and kicked off a famine the day the last soldier took the last plane out of Kabul.
I’m bringing this up not as a gotcha
What's the gotcha? USAID demonstrably not a famine prevention program, as illustrated by this series of events.
perhaps going forward we can celebrate the deaths of programs like this a little less and lament the cessation of what good was done a little more.
The difference between Bush-to-Biden Era policy and Trump 2 Era policy is "All Stick, No Carrot". It's an ineffective policy, because it assumes - incorrectly - that a fuel bomb can do more to bend people to your will than a food truck.
I am not going to lament a program that was used to turn civilian Afghans who'd been rendered destitute and desperate after our initial invasion into cheap, ill-equipped, and disposable goon-squads working on behalf of Northern Alliance child-rapists and opium smugglers.
The mistake we made was carpet bombing Afghanistan to begin with. Then transforming their breadbasket region into commercial poppy farms for global export.
Sending USAID in to plug the hole in national agriculture supply we created during the 2002 invasion, so that we can delay our military exodus by 23 years, isn't something we should be celebrating.
Finally getting a second to respond:
And then we yanked all the aid and kicked off a famine the day the last soldier took the last plane out of Kabul.
I think you may have gotten the timeline confused here, USAID to Afghanistan continued until Trump took office in Jan 2025 - and per the Doha accord, the US withdrew it's military (and diplomatic) presence from Afghanistan in august 2021. The Taliban declared the agreement void in 2025 as a response, though fortunately little has come of that from either side. To be clear, USAID payments were not cut off until ~3.5 years after the US withdrew it's forces, and the current famine is the result of that cessation (medical shortages too, though that's been greatly exacerbated by the Afghan/Pakistan war) (no argument that even with the barest abstraction it was similarly caused by the vast machine of imperialism)
Also unless I'm misunderstanding what you said here, the soviets were the ones that mined Herat during the soviet-afghan war. It wasn't destroyed by the US invasion, it had been salted a decade before - british forces spent a great deal of their time trying to actually do the hearts-and-minds thing by demining much of the arable land (the US did do some demining, but almost all of the work was done by the Brits, Afghan army and Taliban-affiliated groups post-doha. Though as I understand it, UXOs are the greater threat left over from the era of the US war).
It's always been a critical region for food supply - and it has (likely) returned to that role after the taliban's 2022 ban of poppy cultivation. We know that poppy cultivation in the region seems to have stopped at least, though crop yields aren't regularly published by the IEA as far as I am aware so it's solidly in the realm of 'informed speculation' (most likely its been turned to Saffron production - a fairly lucrative trade but I will spare the world yet another lecture on the agrieconomics of rural Afghanistan...)
(unless you're referring to something else as the breadbasket)
(edited for clarity)
USAID to Afghanistan continued until Trump took office in Jan 2025
Biden began freezing access to Afghan funds as early as 2021. He then moved half of the money over to "humanitarian assistance" for Afghans as directed by the US government, effectively "aiding" them with their own stolen funds. And then he simply hijacked half of the funds to send to 9/11 survivors as a publicity stunt.
To be clear, USAID payments were not cut off until ~3.5 years after the US withdrew it’s forces
USAID payments (coming out of stolen Afghan funds) were targeted to areas of the country that maintained US-aligned groups. These were, most notably, the Northern Alliance forces notorious for their opium smuggling and child rape.
We know that poppy cultivation in the region seems to have stopped at least, though crop yields aren’t regularly published by the IEA as far as I am aware so it’s solidly in the realm of ‘informed speculation’
This is exactly what the Taliban did back in 1996, after they had secured the country against the Russian invasion of the prior decade. Also, a central motivating factor for their success. Native Afghans - particularly the devote Muslims - generally didn't like their country being used as a massive drug lab. And the price of heroin globally has jumped since the US left Afghanistan. So their either hording all the opium for themselves. Or they actually ended production, as promised.
Biden began freezing access to Afghan funds as early as 2021.
Yep, this is pretty famous - but it's not USAID, which is what was being discussed and the cessation of which was the thesis of the article about the current famine which you initially linked to.
USAID payments (coming out of stolen Afghan funds) were targeted to areas of the country that maintained US-aligned groups.
So that means they didn't count or...? I'm sorry, I'm sincerely not sure what you're trying to say here.
notorious for their opium smuggling and child rape.
I'm serious about the threat of agrieconomics tedium, I do love this topic. In brief tho, the cessation of the opium trade was the largest (internally originated) exacerbating factor to the 2022 famines and completely destroyed the economy in the poorest regions of the country, and was undertaken as a moral crusade because the trade in opium poppies had again shifted the balance of influence away from local elders and the Imams. It's one of the Taliban's most effective moves in consolidating theological control over the agricultural regions of the country, and it's (predictably) been a humanitarian disaster. The attempt to course-correct with saffron may work eventually, but it's barely comparable in terms of market size (even without considering sanctions) and so many regions are still suffering under the loss of the poppy trade.
(Also good point with the child rape, I agree totally: it's tragic that gay marriage was such an impossible sell to the crossroads muslim population - the Taliban clearly had that particular competition in the bag before it even started)
but it’s not USAID
The money was transferred to accounts used by US relief agencies.
So that means they didn’t count
If I shove you over, take your wallet, hand half the money to my friend who lost his house in a fire, and hand you back an HEB gift card with the other half banked on it? Did I just give you food aid?
In brief tho, the cessation of the opium trade was the largest (internally originated) exacerbating factor to the 2022 famines and completely destroyed the economy in the poorest regions of the country
The sudden loss of an external market for opium exports certainly hurt the Afghan economy overall.
But that market was the result of US military and contractor affiliates and the Karzai government leaving. So... should they simply not have left? Afghanistan should just stay a narco-state forever?
it’s tragic that gay marriage was such an impossible sell to the crossroads muslim population
It's not an impossible sell. But it's also not something foreign governments are going to impose on a population at gunpoint.
This is how you get the old Soviet "Gayness is just when the Brits do Imperialism" bad take.
The money was transferred to accounts used by US relief agencies.
So... wait, then what's your point?
If I shove you [...] Did I just give you food aid?
Vile sure, but literally yes.
The sudden loss of an external market for opium exports certainly hurt the Afghan economy overall.
I'm sorry, this is just me being genuinely unclear on what you're saying here - do you mean that the US military and the Karzai government was the primary market for / exporter of Afghan heroin, or that in leaving they somehow restricted the export of heroin in a way that it hadn't been restricted through their presence, or that there suddenly was no global demand for heroin, or... what? Again not trying to be shitty, genuinely just unclear.
It’s not an impossible sell.
Sure! But it was an impossible sell - and my use of the past tense there was quite intentional. In Afghanistan under Taliban rule it's still effectively impossible, but the cultural attitudes of the crossroads region as a whole are, incredibly slowly, changing in a more positive direction with regards to homosexuality (outside the bounds of pederasty, which is it's own disgusting side topic). However my invocation of the concept was to highlight the use of child rape as a rhetorical tool to polarize attitudes towards the northern alliance, while ignoring that the Taliban's approach was to simply declare child rape legal if you're married (but not if it's gay child rape - no, that's A Bridge Too Far!). A clever loophole, though still by any other definition child rape.
should they simply not have left? Afghanistan should just stay a narco-state forever?
Bit of a false dilemma here. So stepping around it to the issue, I'm genuinely interested in why you're presenting the export of narcotics as being a Bad Thing™. That was one common piece of rhetoric trotted out to justify having blown the crap out of some random farming village (and that the US is actively using to justify murdering random fishermen in south/central america), and it's as much a pro-imperialist argument now as it was back then.
This is how you get the old Soviet “Gayness is just when the Brits do Imperialism” bad take.
I've not encountered this one before, that's... another one for the inconveniently-on-brand pile, I suppose.
What's the gotcha?
There wasn't one?
Because this is dozens to low hundreds of deaths in this total conflict and Russia is more than that per day. It's a minor border skirmish. The type that can go on for decades.
... Minor border skirmish?
Yes, despite casualties it is the definition of a minor border skirmish. It's a neighbor dispute because there aren't good fences or a steep border, because the mountains allows small groups to move easily hidden and Pakistan is both a sponsor of terrorism against India in targeted attacks and a victim of other groups.
Okay sure but... did you mean to reply to me with that? It has nothing at all to do with anything I said.
Both horrors, and countless others, can be traced back to the US... No US-based media is allowed to report on all of them... Still wondering why?
