Afghanistan ranks 155th out of 169 countries on the U.N. Development Programme's Human Development Index
By Michelle Nichols
The United Nations on Saturday launched a $678 million humanitarian appeal for Afghanistan, where despite inflows of millions of foreign aid dollars, the world body said about a quarter of the population goes hungry.
7.4 million Afghans live with hunger and fear of starvation, millions more rely on food help and one in five children die before the age of five.
U.N. Assistant Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Catherine Bragg said some 7.4 million Afghans were living with hunger and fear of starvation, millions more rely on food help and one in five children die before the age of five.
"Despite progress in some areas, the toll of the ongoing conflict and endemic natural disasters on Afghanistan's people remains immense, requiring continued life saving assistance," Bragg, also the U.N. deputy emergency relief coordinator, said in a statement marking the 2011 appeal.
Western nations supporting President Hamid Karzai are pouring vast amounts of aid into Afghanistan, but much of the cash is spent in areas with the worst insurgency problems to show locals that they can reap gains from rejecting the Taliban.
A substantial portion also goes on security costs and the salaries of foreign experts.
Afghanistan does not grow enough food for its people, and the war between NATO-led forces and the Taliban -- now in its 10th year -- has pushed up costs of imports. The conflict has also made swathes of the country inaccessible for aid groups.
The International Committee of the Red Cross warned on Thursday that the dire humanitarian situation was likely to deteriorate further unless a political settlement was reached between the government and the Taliban.
Afghanistan ranks 155th out of 169 countries on the U.N. Development Programme's Human Development Index, which measures health, knowledge, and income. Bragg said the conflict had cut the capacity and availability of basic services.
"We hope to recast the humanitarian agenda in Afghanistan based upon the core tenets of humanity, impartiality and neutrality and be better placed to reach more people," she said.
But the pressure on 192 U.N. member states for aid is high with fundraising competing with other campaigns, including help for earthquake survivors in Haiti and flood victims in Pakistan.
The 2010 U.N. appeal for $775 million for Afghanistan has achieved two-thirds of its target and is the fourth most funded U.N. appeal this year behind Haiti, Pakistan and Sudan.
The ICRC also launched its appeal this week for $89 million for Afghanistan, its largest humanitarian operation for the second year in a row.
Despite the presence of 150,000 foreign troops, military and civilian casualties are at their worst levels since the 2001 removal of the Taliban.
U.S. and NATO leaders agreed last month to a schedule set by Afghan President Hamid Karzai for foreign forces to end combat operations in Afghanistan by 2014. U.S. President Barack Obama, who will review his Afghanistan war strategy next month, has said Washington will begin a gradual drawdown from July 2011.
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ISAF immediately attacked the credibility of the Afghan government's report, complaining bitterly of Karzai's decision to condemn the incident without conferring with U.S. and allied forces.
Working with our team in Afghanistan led by Anita Sreedhar, Brave New Foundation's Rethink Afghanistan campaign sent an intrepid local blogger into Sangin--one of Afghanistan's most volatile areas--to get the truth. The video interviews he obtained are incredible and horrifying. We made the full interview transcripts available online at http://rethinkafghanistan.com, and we encourage you to read them. Here's the short version: Every survivor our interviewer talked to confirmed that a massive civilian casualty event occurred, and that NATO was responsible.
NATO vs. the Kabul Government
ISAF began their push-back against press accounts of the Sangin incident with a simple press release on July 24: "We have no operational reporting that correlates to this alleged incident." No further press release available on the ISAF website expands or updates this statement. However, ISAF personnel soon ratcheted up their attacks on the Afghan government's narrative and, in the process, circulated alternative (and often contradictory) official responses, tallies and accounts of the event.
"Any speculation at this point of an alleged civilian casualty in Rigi village is completely unfounded...We are conducting a thorough joint investigation with our Afghan partners and will report any and all findings when known."
Later, again on August 5, while ISAF provided quotes from named sources for attribution that denied knowledge of the outcome of the investigation, an unnamed "senior intelligence official" told The New York Times that six civilians died with eight Taliban fighters when a troop fired a Javelin rocket into a structure from which U.S. Marines took fire.
When asked to explain the discrepancy between his tally and that of the Afghan government, the unnamed official cited "political challenges," as if "political challenges" account for a 33-person difference in the death tallies. This explanation reminds one of the Gardez massacre earlier this year, when ISAF tried to pass off its blatant lie about an American special forces team finding women "bound, gagged and executed" as a "cultural misunderstanding," when in fact they'd killed the women themselves and tried to dig the bullets out while one of them was still alive, screaming in pain. In effect, this unnamed source accused Afghan locals and officials of lying about civilian deaths because of hard feelings between them and the coalition.
What is going on here? One explanation might be that ISAF engaged in the same type of damage control campaign utilized in other horrifying incidents like the Farah airstrike and the Gardez massacre. In both cases, ISAF initially denied wrongdoing, aggressively attacked the credibility of alternative accounts that disputed the official story, and claimed that the evidence was either neutral or exculpatory. Only when new information made it impossible to deny responsibility did ISAF admit its guilt in both cases. Perhaps we're seeing a repeat of that behavior here.
Regardless of the source and possible motivation for all this contradicting information and blatant disinformation, what is clear, based on interviews obtained by our team on the ground in Sangin, is that ISAF troops killed dozens of civilians on July 23.
52 people were killed! We don't know how many children or women! ...The rest of my family is scattered and lost I don't know where they are. ...My mind doesn't work okay. ... My daughter's in laws were sitting in our house with their other children when the bombing started I saw them get killed with my own eyes!
--Mahmoud Jan Kaka
I saw a child on the floor was injured. I thought he was the only injured one so I took him to the clinic. When I came back my nephew told me that there were more injured people. I tried to pull my daughter from the rubble but I couldn't. I heard her calling for help but I couldn't reach her.
--Abdul Zahar
In all of my experiences not the Russians or the Taliban ever did what they (N.A.T.O.) did. ...I wanted to go to the government post and tell them to kill the rest of us too as we have nothing to live for anymore!
...In the morning we see bodies with heads, blood and guts everywhere, arms here and legs there. All of my loved ones who were still alive were soaked in blood. We tried to go and identify the bodies; everyone was looking for there missing relatives. There was so much sorrow and pain from those people who were lost in shock.
U.S. and allied forces in Afghanistan have denied they killed several dozen civilians in Sangin District of Helmand Province on July 23. But new video of Rethink Afghanistan exposes the truth about one of the worst civilian casualty incidents of the war.
The most important takeaway from these interviews, aside from the universal attribution of blame to NATO, is that there is absolutely no way that the civilian death toll is in the single digits. One person described losing eight family members; another said he lost nine loved ones; still another lost 11. One of the men, Abdul Barg, insisted that, "the number of martyred were no less than 35 up to 50." He also related that "every family in the village was placing at least a couple of their loved ones in a bag."
These video interviews prove what NATO wants to deny. As you watch the footage of these Afghan men and hear their voices crack, it becomes sickeningly clear. U.S. and allied forces killed dozens of Afghan civilians in Sangin.
More than 200 people demonstrated over the July 23 incident in the Sangin district of Helmand province... The protesters shouted "Death to America" and carried banners calling for justice and pictures of children they say were killed in the strike...
This is what our elected officials need to understand: when we debate the war in Afghanistan, it's not an academic exercise. It's a string of specific incidents like Sangin, concrete moral outrages that pay us back with increased strategic risk.
Our reaction to Sangin and the other similar catastrophes defines us. That's why when I go into a voting booth this November, or I get a solicitation for a political donation or a request to volunteer for a federal candidate, I'm going ask, "How did this person respond when he or she heard that we slaughtered the heart of a village? Did this person explain it away? Did they continue to support a policy that ensured more Sangins all across Afghanistan? Or did they finally catch themselves, finally realize that this war ensures the slow death of more children under rubble while parents claw at the pile?" These are the questions I'll ask myself before I punch the touch-screen at the local library, and if the opinion polls are any indication, I'll be far, far from alone.
I encourage all of you to visit http://rethinkafghanistan.com to send a note to your elected officials and let them know you'll be watching what they do in response to this disaster, and that you'll remember it when you vote in November.
I've been trying to write about the oil that now gushes (200,000 gallons a day is "gushing") into an ecosystem that was already collapsing and which an obituary can now be written. I'm not going to write it but it could be written and NOAA (that science agency) proved it's possibilities and predicted it all alerting EVERYONE in a position to act in time! But the Cartels (Finance and Oil) got their way using the Illusion of Democracy created for and paid by YOU. Yep, when you filled up last you helped pay for the alcohol, cocaine and prostitutes to entertain the regulators as well as the rooms they sleep it off in afterwards. You also subsidized their shady deals, payed to much for their legal counsel and in the end will, as you always have, pick up the tab for the repercussions it all brings.
Bill Moyers in his final broadcast called it Plutocracy and like oil and water they don't mix. You can call it what you want (oligarchy, corporatocracy, plutocracy or my favorite kleptocracy) but it's not Democracy so don't expect that we'll act as such as our environment continues to worsen. Unlike Prince Charles and Sting the average citizen can't afford to be "Green". It costs too much which truly means it's not "green" with the hidden cost of this lifestyle revealed only by those who can afford it, the wealthy. Being rich just allows you to shop at Whole Foods and have at least one of your cars be a hybrid. These wealthy are great advocates of the Green Revolution but mostly the products they hawk, even if it's just themselves, the carbon they burn showing how green they are is as real as New York City and the events they love to showcase that are fake. This years Earth Day Celebrations held in the streets outside Grand Central Terminal in New York City was what I could only call disgusting. Corporate America, whatever that is, wrapped itself in the Earth Day flag. They greenwashed everyone (almost, I saw some other disgusted faces) with schwag (a marketing industry word for plastic crap to giveaway) and of course the reusable eco bag with logo's galore to carry it all in. I almost felt sorry for the few booths maned by actual concerned citizens and not paid promoters. I said, almost.
The charade goes on and on and as long as we hear of the occasional civil protest or the jailing of a corrupt individual we continue to believe in our vibrant democracy which is an illusion that will one day cost most of us a loved one or friend if it hasn't already. In these times we cannot expect our government to act on our behalf as they are not beholden to us, the citizenry. What we can expect is the continued widening of the disparity between the haves and the haves not with the continued looting by one at the expense of the other with pacification provided by the media cartels and their infotainment we so all love and trust. With the illusion intact, patriotic means going shopping and wealth is in reach of us all. You just have to be as smart and motivated (I prefer crooked and corrupt) as the guy you wish to replace.
So to all aspiring for the American Dream I say WAKE UP FROM YOUR MEDIA INDUCED COMA and realize that what we are really bequeathing to our children after we depart is really SERVITUDE not democracy.
NOAA graphic showing oil trajectory for May 2nd & 3rd, 2010.
Sacrifice (from a Middle English verb meaning "to make sacred", from Old French, from Latinsacrificium: sacr, "sacred" + facere, "to make") is commonly known as the practice of offering food, objects (typically valuables), or the lives of animals or people to the gods as an act of propitiation or worship. The term is also used metaphorically to describe selfless good deeds for others or a short term loss in return for a greater gain, such as in a game of chess. Recently it has also come into use as meaning doing without something or giving something up
