An editorial by Jamie York
After more than 17 years of war, Afghanistan is one of the poorest and least developed nations on the planet. Those who claim that the United States cannot be held responsible for these conditions are mistaken. After all, our own CIA supplied arms to the Mujahideen during the war with the Soviet Union and funneled cash into fundamentalist Taliban religious schools near the Pakistan border, so how can we claim no responsibility for the conditions there? Under the principle of historical causation, the actions of the past have both direct and indirect implications on future events.
After Sept. 11, the military retaliation against the Taliban is further contributing to the humanitarian disaster in Afghanistan. Even before the first cruise missile hit the ground, the illiteracy rate in Afghanistan was 70 percent. Most medical professionals had already fled the country and there are few programs to train new health practitioners or to care for the estimated two million who are physically maimed or mentally traumatized by land mines and years of war. The infant mortality rate -- one of the key indicators in assessing the health status of a nation -- is 158 (per 1,000 live births), which is one of the highest rates in the world. The life expectancy is 44 years and only 10 percent of the country's 23 million people have access to safe drinking water.
Even though the U.S. and Britain claim that they are bombing only military targets -- which has proven to be false -- the World Health Organization reports that the bombing is forcing people out of the cities and into rural areas where they will risk starvation as winter approaches. The WHO also reports that the movement of medicines and medical supplies into rural areas is very difficult and often involves travel by trucks, jeeps and donkeys before reaching their destination. More than 60,000 Afghans fled into neighboring Pakistan before the bombing began and they are now living in refugee camps, where they are at risk for communicable diseases and starvation. According to the United Nations, 7,500,000 Afghans are at risk for starvation this winter. If this happens, the U.S. government's desire for revenge may turn into a new Holocaust.
This "war on terrorism" has no hope of wiping out terrorism, but it is certainly exacerbating a humanitarian crisis. Why are we doing this? Are we doing this in the name of the victims of the World Trade Center attacks? Are we doing this in the name of liberty and freedom? Are we doing this in the name of civilization? While President Bush throws out the first pitch at the World Series in New York and the nation's attention is drawn away from the war crisis to domestic anthrax threats and abstract warnings about possible new terrorist attacks on bridges, the bombs keep falling in Afghanistan.
Those Afghans who die from bombs may be the lucky ones, as the fate of many more will be slow and painful deaths as a result of starvation and curable diseases. And what future events will come about as a result of our present actions? Those who support this "war on terrorism" must be beaming with patriotic pride right about now.