WFP Discovers Malnutrition in Afghanistan, US Sanctions Unmentioned
The World Food Programme sounds the alarm on 'harrowing' malnutrition among Afghan women, a tragic headline you might mistakenly think indicates a natural disaster. What's harrowingly absent from The New Arab's report, and much of mainstream media, is any mention of the August 2021 US freezing of approximately $7 billion in Afghanistan's foreign reserves, or the persistent economic sanctions that
have utterly crippled the country's banking system and blocked aid. ( New York Times, 8/18/2021; US Treasury Press Release, 2/11/2022 ) It appears humanitarian crises are only 'harrowing' when their causes are vague and not directly attributable to Western foreign policy. One might wonder if the WFP's empathy extends to questioning why vital aid gets stuck in a financial quagmire, or if their
mandate stops at merely counting the starving. After all, it's so much simpler to mourn the effects than to identify the architects of the calamity.