A British orchestra will this week play, for the first time, a programme of Afghan music, featuring exiled Afghan musicians on traditional instruments
The musicians of Afghanistan have again been silenced by the Taliban. Other than specific religious and patriotic forms and contexts, the group believe that listening to or making music is morally corrupting. If there is anything to the Taliban’s credit here, it is that they recognise music’s potential to shape our subjective experiences, transmit ideas and build and strengthen communities. Since the group’s return to power in August last year, musicians have been murdered and brutalised, wedding parties have been raided, and centres for music learning have been closed.
I first visited the country in July 2018 to meet the members of the Afghan Women’s Orchestra at the Afghanistan National Institute of Music, the specialist school set up in 2010 by Ahmad Sarmast and which – before its forced closure last July – had 350 students. For three years I gave weekly online lessons to the young conductors, men and women, at the school. These lessons had their challenges, not least the regular power cuts and slow internet speeds in Kabul, but they gave me a tantalising insight into the orchestras, repertoire and rehearsal practices of the young ensembles at the school, opened my ears to the unique sounds and forms of Afghanistan’s orchestral music. Above all, I was reminded yet again that orchestras can and do change lives.
Elders call for international recognition but supreme leader tells foreign countries not to interfere
A gathering of thousands of Afghan clerics and elders has ended with a call for international recognition, but silence on the country’s ban on secondary education for girls.
Nearly a year since their surprise military triumph across Afghanistan, not a single country has officially recognised the Taliban as the legitimate government.
Afghans in the east of the country have spent several days digging through rubble, often by hand, following an earthquake. The disaster hit both Afghanistan and Pakistan on 22 June. Reports suggest up to 1000 people have died with 1500 injured. The 6 magnitude event is the deadliest to hit Afghanistan in two decades.
The Taliban government has asked for aid and US president Joe Biden is said to be monitoring the situation. National security advisor Jake Sullivan told reporters:
We are committed to continuing our support for the needs of the Afghan people as we stand with them during and in the aftermath of this terrible tragedy
In the broader context, much international aid is focused on Ukraine. That makes any substantial reallocation at the request of an ‘enemy’ government like the Taliban seem unlikely.
National wealth
Little was made of the US’s twenty year occupation of Afghanistan. The military operation there ended in 2021 with the collapse of the US-backed government in the face of a rapid Taliban advance. Over a short period of time thousands of foreign national and military personnel were airlifted out of the country from Kabul.
There seems to have been little serious reflection at the top policy levels in the US and UK. But Joe Biden did freeze billions of dollars of Afghanistan’s wealth in US banks.
The Administration will seek to facilitate access to $3.5 billion of those assets for the benefit of the Afghan people and for Afghanistan’s future pending a judicial decision.
9/11 families
Some of the frozen cash seems set to be paid to the families of 9/11 victims. A decision which even some US commentators judged to be cruel:
…this is money that belonged to the internationally recognized and legitimate Afghan government that was established by the United States and other international partners after the U.S. invasion.
That government came into existence after the terrorist attacks, so it clearly had nothing to do with those attacks.
The problem is one of basic economics: Seizing the central bank funds has brought economic activity to a standstill.
But even before the US withdrawal, Afghanistan was one of the world’s poorest countries. Withholding the population’s money just risks plunging people into deeper destitution. This can only be made worse in the face of disasters like the latest earthquake. And, if the Biden administration is, as it claims, genuinely interested in helping Afghans, it should stop holding onto their cash.
A massive 5.9-magnitude earthquake that struck southeastern Afghanistan early Wednesday has killed more than 1,000 people, according to local officials, though the death toll is expected to rise. The earthquake comes as the United Nations reports nearly half of Afghanistan’s population already faces acute hunger. Thousands more have been injured and lost their homes along with everything they own. “Many more will be dead, and we are now rushing with aid,” says Jan Egeland, secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council. He says he agrees with the Taliban government that U.S. sanctions on Afghanistan are making it more difficult for aid organizations like his to supply critical resources to Afghans.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMYGOODMAN: Officials in southeastern Afghanistan say a massive earthquake early Wednesday has killed more than 1,000 people. Afghans described the moment the 5.9-magnitude earthquake struck their homes in Paktika province.
FATIMA: [translated] It was midnight when the quake struck. The kids and I screamed. One of our rooms was destroyed. Our neighbors screamed, and we saw everyone’s rooms.
FAISAL: [translated] It was about midnight when the quake struck. It destroyed the houses of our neighbors. When we arrived, there were many dead and wounded. They sent us to the hospital. I also saw many dead bodies.
AMYGOODMAN: The death toll from the earthquake is expected to rise. Thousands have been injured, lost their homes and everything they owned.
The earthquake comes as the United Nations reports nearly half of Afghanistan’s population already faces acute hunger. The Taliban has called for more international aid, while saying sanctions have hampered the government’s ability to respond to the multiple crises facing the country. Some aid groups, like the Norwegian Refugee Council, report their teams are now on the ground in Afghanistan to support affected communities with funds and emergency shelter.
For more, we’re joined by Jan Egeland, secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council. Now, he’s in Somalia, which we’re going to talk about in a minute.
But first, Jan, if you can talk about the situation in Afghanistan after this devastating earthquake and what kind of humanitarian work is underway, what needs to get to the affected area?
JANEGELAND: The situation in eastern Afghanistan, in Khost and in Paktia, is truly desperate. It’s like all of the plagues of the Bible falling down on these very poor people at the same time.
So, we are — have been operational in Afghanistan for decades. We have 1,400 aid workers on the ground. We did not leave when the Taliban took over, nor did we leave these areas. So, from Khost, the city, we sent teams immediately.
And I just got some images of the devastation from our field workers on the ground. It is — these are very poor houses. They have weak structures, in very poor, mountainous communities. The number of people killed will go up. The 1,000 you just mentioned is too low. Many more will be dead.
And we are now rushing with aid. We will build shelter for the people who lost everything. And we’ll also try to have cash distributions to those who cannot afford anything at the moment.
AMYGOODMAN: And your comment on the Taliban saying that sanctions are hurting aid efforts?
JANEGELAND: No, of course. Of course. I mean, if you’re in a country where we, the aid organizations, cannot even do normal bank transfers — the banking system is paralyzed. The regime that took over is under heavy sanctions. It is much more difficult, much more costly to do aid work, but it’s not stopping us. We’re continuing to work.
We understand that people are as angry as we are that the Taliban are preventing girls from getting secondary education. But it will be the ultimate insult to these girls that they starve to death and perish in earthquakes because of our opposition to the education policies of Taliban.
So, of course, we have to help. And the sanctions must give a much more clear blanket exemption to humanitarian work. We need to be able to do financial transactions normally to our aid workers on the ground.
According to Afghan officials, their authorities struggled to reach out to remote areas hit by an earthquake on Wednesday that killed More than 1,000 people but poor communications and a lack of proper roads hampered their efforts.
Mohammad Ismail Muawiyah, a spokesman for the top Taliban military commander in the hardest-hit Paktika province, told Reuters that “We can’t reach the area, the networks are too weak, we trying to get updates.
According to Media Reports the magnitude 6.1 earthquake struck early on Wednesday about 160 km, (100 miles) southeast of Kabul, in arid mountains dotted with small settlements near the border with Pakistan.
The earthquake killed some 1,000 people and injured 1,500 injured while more than 3,000 houses were destroyed, media reported.
According to U.S. government data, the toll makes Afghanistan’s deadliest earthquake in two decades.
About 600 people had been rescued from various affected areas on Wednesday night, disaster management officials said.
According to Reuters the, rescue operation will be a major test for the Taliban authorities, who took over the country last August after two decades of war and have been cut off from much international assistance because of sanctions.
The United Nations said its World Food Programme (WFP) was sending food and logistics equipment to affected areas, with the aim of initially supporting 3,000 households.
Japan and South Korea both said they also plan to send aid.
A bit belatedly this overview for the 50th session:
The 50th session of the UN Human Rights Council, from 13 June to 8 July 2022, will consider issues including sexual orientation and gender identity, violence and discrimination against women and girls, poverty, peaceful assembly and association, and freedom of expression, among others. It will also present an opportunity to address grave human rights situations including in Afghanistan, Belarus, China, Eritrea, Israel and OPT, Russia, Sudan, Syria and Venezuela, among many others. With “HRC50 | Key issues on agenda of June 2022 session” the ISHR provided again its indispensable guide. Here’s an overview of some of the key issues on the agenda that are the most relevant to HRDs [see also: https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2022/02/21/guide-to-49th-session-of-human-rights-council-with-human-rights-defenders-focus/ and https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2022/04/15/results-49th-session-human-rights-council-as-seen-by-ngos/
Thematic areas of interest
Here are some highlights of the session’s thematic discussions
Business and human rights
Despite their vital work to protect the environment and combat climate change, Indigenous peoples as well as land and environmental defenders continue to be attacked. New data shows an alarming pattern of violence and harassment as a precursor to lethal attacks against defenders.
In 2020, Global Witness registered the killings of 137 land and environmental defenders in just five of the most dangerous countries for them: Colombia, Guatemala, Kenya, Mexico and the Philippines. However, a new dataset from the ALLIED Data Working Group, a coalition in which ISHR takes part, focused on these countries has for the first time documented what is often hidden – the non-lethal attacks, including threats, harassment, smear campaigns and stigmatisation that are a precursor to the shocking number of deaths we see each year.
The findings highlight the urgent need for States to monitor, collect data, report on the situation of these defenders, and address the root causes of attacks against them. ISHR urges all States to make a commitment to the systematic monitoring of attacks on indigenous, land and environmental defenders in their countries, and to take stronger action, together with civil society and relevant UN Special Procedures, to address the root causes of attacks in the debate with the Working Group due to take place on 21 June 2022.
Reprisals
Reports of cases of intimidation and reprisal against those cooperating or seeking to cooperate with the UN not only continue, but grow. Intimidation and reprisals violate the rights of the individuals concerned, they constitute violations of international human rights law, and they undermine the UN human rights system.
The UN has taken action towards addressing this critical issue, including:
Requesting that the Secretary General prepare an annual report on cases and trends of reprisals;
Establishing a dedicated dialogue under item 5 to take place every September;
Affirmation by the Council of the particular responsibilities of its Members, President and Vice-Presidents to investigate and promote accountability for reprisals and intimidation; and
The appointment of the UN Assistant Secretary General on Human Rights as the Senior Official on addressing reprisals.
Despite this, ISHR remains deeply concerned about reprisals against civil society actors who try to engage with UN mechanisms, and consistent in its calls for all States and the Council to do more to address the situation.
During the 48th session, the Council adopted a resolution on reprisals. The text was adopted by consensus for the first time since 2009 and invites the UN Secretary General to submit his annual report on reprisals and intimidation to the UN General Assembly. Once again the resolution listed key trends, including that acts of intimidation and reprisals can signal patterns, increasing self-censorship, and the use of national security arguments and counter-terrorism strategies by States as justification for blocking access to the UN. The resolution also acknowledged the specific risks to individuals in vulnerable situations or belonging to marginalised groups, and called on the UN to implement gender-responsive policies to end reprisals. The Council called on States to combat impunity by conducting prompt, impartial and independent investigations and ensuring accountability for all acts of intimidation or reprisal, both online and offline, by condemning all such acts publicly, providing access to effective remedies for victims, and preventing any recurrence.
Item 5 of the Human Rights Council’s agenda provides a key opportunity for States to raise concerns about specific cases of reprisals, and for governments involved in existing cases to provide an update to the Council on any investigation or action taken toward accountability. The President should also update the Council on actions taken by the President and Bureau to follow up on cases and promote accountability under this item.
Due to the lack of a general debate under item 5 at HRC 50, ISHR encourages States to raise concerns about specific cases of reprisals during the interactive dialogues on the relevant countries on the agenda at this session or in the context of thematic interactive dialogues where relevant.
During the organisational meeting held on 30 May, the President of the Council stressed the importance of ensuring the safety of those participating in the Council’s work, and the obligation of States to prevent intimidation or reprisals.
In line with previous calls, ISHR expects the President of the Human Rights Council to publicly identify and denounce specific instances of reprisals by issuing formal statements, conducting press-briefings, corresponding directly with the State concerned, publicly releasing such correspondence with States involved, and insisting on undertakings from the State concerned to investigate, hold perpetrators accountable and report back to the Council on action taken.
Sexual orientation and gender identity
The mandate of the Independent Expert on violence and discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity is up for renewal for the second time at this session. We will be following this closely and call on all States to support the mandate and contribute to the Council’s efforts to combat violence and discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity.
Other thematic reports
At this 50th session, the Council will discuss a range of civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights through dedicated debates with the mandate holders and the High Commissioner, including interactive dialogues with:
The Special rapporteur on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association
The Independent Expert on protection against violence and discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity
The Special Rapporteur on the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health
The Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression
The Special Rapporteur on the right to education
The Independent Expert on human rights and international solidarity
The Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary of arbitrary executions
The Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights
The Special Rapporteur on promotion and protection of human rights in the context of climate change
The Working Group on the issue of human rights and transnational corporations and other business enterprises
The Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance
The High Commissioner on State responses to pandemics
In addition, the Council will hold dedicated debates on the rights of specific groups including;
The Special Rapporteur on the rights of internally displaced persons
The Working Group on discrimination against women and girls
The Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls, its causes and consequences
The Special Rapporteur on the human rights of migrants
The Special Rapporteur on trafficking in persons, especially women and children
The Special Rapporteur on the elimination of discrimination against persons affected by leprosy and their family members
The Special Rapporteur on independence of judges and lawyers
Since August 2021, when the Taliban took control of the country, there has been an enormous deterioration in the recognition and protection of the rights of women and girls in Afghanistan, including with respect to the rights to non-discrimination, education, work, public participation, health, and sexual and reproductive health. The Taliban has also imposed sweeping restrictions on the rights to freedom of expression, association, assembly and movement for women and girls. Afghanistan is now the only country in the world to expressly prohibit girls’ education.
The world’s worst women’s rights crisis demands a response and it would be unacceptable for the June session of the HRC, traditionally the session focused on gender-related issues, to pass without some meaningful action on the issue. I
The Council will hold an interactive dialogue with the High Commissioner on the update on Afghanistan on 15 June 2022.
China
The High Commissioner’s visit to China failed to adequately address widespread and systematic violations in the country, express solidarity with victims and defenders, or pave the way for meaningful monitoring of China’s human rights crisis across the Uyghur and Tibetan regions, Hong Kong and mainland China. The High Commissioner’s end of mission statement failed to address strong, specific concerns or make substantive, concrete recommendations to the governmen. The broad concerns issued in a light language do not match the scope and gravity of human rights violations across the country that have been thoroughly documented by UN experts and civil society and that could amount to crimes against humanity and genocide.
States should call on the High Commissioner to immediately publish her OHCHR report on the Uyghur region, with clear, compelling recommendations to the government, and present her findings in a briefing to the Human Rights Council. The High Commissioner should also ensure that the established annual meeting and working group for dialogue with the authorities are of public nature, include specific substantive recommendations to the government, and involve substantial consultation with a diverse set of independent civil society groups. China should also follow suit on promises for subsequent visits by the OHCHR by granting prompt unfettered access to Hong Kong and the Tibetan region. See also: https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2022/06/09/disappointment-with-un-high-commissioners-visit-to-xinjiang-boils-over/
Burundi
The Commission of Inquiry on Burundi (CoI) concluded its work at the 48th HRC session in October 2021 while a new resolution establishing a mandate of UN Special Rapporteur on Burundi was adopted, resolution 48/16. The resolution tasks the mandate with monitoring the human rights situation in the country, making recommendations for its improvement, and reporting to the Human Rights Council. During the 50th HRC session, the newly nominated Special Rapporteur on Burundi will present their first oral update on 29 June 2022.
Egypt
Notwithstanding the launch of a national human rights strategy, the fundamental purpose of which is to deflect international scrutiny rather than advance human rights, there has been no significant improvement in the human rights situation in Egypt since the joint statement delivered by States in March 2021 at HRC46. Emblematic recent examples include: Ayman Hadhoud’s death in the custody of Egyptian security forces following his enforced disappearance over two months ago and the execution of seven people in Egypt on 8 and 10 March 2022 following trials in which the defendants were forcibly disappeared, tortured, and denied their right to a lawyer.
In response to the Egyptian President’s announcement of “reactivating the work of the Presidential Pardon Committee” on 26 April 2022, Egyptian human rights organisations submitted a proposal for a fair and transparent process to release political prisoners in Egypt. Yet, recent harsh sentences in unfair trials against peaceful critics demonstrate further the lack of political will of the Egyptian authorities to address the crisis of arbitrary detention in Egypt. ISHR joined more than 100 NGOs from around the world in urging the HRC to create a monitoring and reporting mechanism on the ever-deteriorating human rights situation in Egypt.
Israel and oPT
This session, the COI on the oPt and Israel established in 2021 will present its first report to the HRC. Civil society from around the world had welcomed the historic resolution establishing the standing Commission of Inquiry to address Israel’s latest and ongoing violations against the Palestinian people on both sides of the Green Line, while also addressing the root causes of Israel’s settler colonialism and apartheid. The interactive dialogue with the CoI comes in the context of mounting recognition of Israel’s establishment and maintenance of an apartheid regime by Israel over the Palestinian people as a whole. During HRC49, the SR on the oPT called on the international community to accept and adopt his findings as well as the “findings by Palestinian, Israeli and international human rights organisations that apartheid is being practised by Israel in the occupied Palestinian territory and beyond.” In its 2019 concluding observations, the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination found that Israel’s policies violated Article 3 of ICERD pertaining to segregation and apartheid on both sides of the Green Line. In 2022, the Human Rights Committee concluding observations on Israel emphasized the “pre-existing systematic and structural discrimination against non-Jews”.
While some States continue to seek to undermine the mandate of the CoI and effective accountability mechanisms to put an end to Israel’s apartheid regime, CSOs support the CoI’s methodological approach to fulfill its vital mandate. We call on States to engage with the substance of the mandate of the CoI during the interactive dialogue, express support for this important accountability mechanism and ensure it has sufficient resources to discharge its mandate.
Russia
Together with a coalition of international and regional NGOs, as well as numerous Russian civil society organisations, ISHR urges the Council to establish an independent international monitoring and reporting mechanism on Russia. In the context of the systematic repression of civil society organisations, severe restrictions on press freedoms and independent media, severe restrictions and criminalisation of many forms of free expression, association, assembly and peaceful protest, and the propagation of huge volumes of misinformation, a Special Rapporteur is necessary to ensure that the international community receives vital information about the human rights situation on the ground.
Sudan
The Council will hold a debate with the High Commissioner and Expert on Sudan on 15 June 2022.
The Sudanese Women Rights Action documented from March to April 2022 the violations against women protesters, including arrests, injuries, and sexual violence. Their report also highlighted the economic and humanitarian situation in conflict areas and in the country in general. The report shows that “the coup leaders are using increasing violence against women protesters, including arrests, fabricated charges, direct lethal violence in protests, and sexual violence. The civic space is shrinking across Sudan, where human rights groups and WHRDs are not able to work freely and safely. Surveillance on internet, communication, movement, and offices of many groups led them to work from underground. The economic conditions and the fragile political situation is increasing women insecurity, as the peace process failed to end violence conflict areas. Women in Sudan are living in constant fear of violence with growing threats of the collapse of the state.”
In light of this context, ISHR urges all States to support the adoption of a resolution that ensures continued attention to Sudan’s human rights situation through enhanced interactive dialogues at the Council’s 52nd and 53rd regular sessions. While the Expert’s mandate is ongoing, a resolution is required for the Council to hold public debates and continue to formally discuss the situation. A resolution at the Council’s 50th session would operationalise resolution S-32/1, which in its operative paragraph 19 called upon “the High Commissioner and the designated Expert to monitor human rights violations and abuses and to continue to bring information thereon to the attention of the Human Rights Council, and to advise on the further steps that may be needed if the situation continues to deteriorate.”
Venezuela
On 29 June, the Council will hold an interactive dialogue with the High Commissioner on her report on the situation of human rights in Venezuela. The Council requested her to provide in this report a detailed assessment of the implementation of the recommendations made in her previous reports. Implementation of recommendations and improvements in the human rights situation on the ground remains a critical question as HRC mandates for OHCHR and the international investigative body for Venezuela expire in September. Venezuelan civil society groups continue to show evidence of a lack of any substantive human rights reform in the country, of a lack of meaningful cooperation by the State and – in fact – of regression in key areas such as judicial independence and civic space. ISHR urges States at the upcoming session to express support for the work of OHCHR in the country, and encourage the Office to speak clearly to realities on the ground. In addition, States should signal their support for the continuance of the work of the HRC’s fact-finding mission to the country through an extension of the Mission’s mandate at HRC51.
The adoption of the report of the third cycle UPR on Venezuela will also take place on the 29 June or 1 July.
Other country situations
The Council will hold an interactive dialogue on the High Commissioner’s annual report on 14 June 2022. The Council will hold debates on and is expected to consider resolutions addressing a range of country situations, in some instances involving the renewal of the relevant expert mandates. These include:
Interactive Dialogue with the Special Rapporteur on Eritrea
Interactive Dialogues with the High Commissioner and Special Rapporteur on Myanmar
Interactive Dialogue with the High Commissioner on Nicaragua
Interactive Dialogues with the High Commissioner on Ukraine
Interactive Dialogue with the Commission of Inquiry on Syria
Interactive Dialogue with the International commission of Human Rights Experts on Ethiopia
Interactive Dialogue with the Special Rapporteur on Belarus
Interactive Dialogue with the Independent Fact-Finding Mission on Libya
Interactive Dialogue with the Independent Expert on Central African Republic
Council programme, appointments and resolutions
The President of the Human Rights Council will propose candidates for the following mandates:
Special Rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief
Special Rapporteur on the right to education
Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea
Working Group on the issue of human rights and transnational corporations and other business enterprises, member from African States
Expert Mechanism on the Right to Development, member from Latin American and Caribbean States
Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment
Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances, member from Eastern European States
Working Group on the issue of human rights and transnational corporations and other business enterprises, member from Western European and other States
Resolutions to be presented to the Council’s 50th session
At the organizational meeting on 30 May the following resolutions were announced (States leading the resolution in brackets):
Elimination of discrimination against women (Mexico), mandate renewal
Freedom of expression (Brazil, Canada, Fiji, Sweden, Namibia, Netherlands)
Elimination of female genital mutilation (Africa Group)
Rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association (Czech Republic, Indonesia, Lithuania, Maldives, Mexico), mandate renewal
Human rights situation in Sudan (United Kingdom, Germany, Norway, United States)
Human rights situation in Syria (Germany, France, Italy, Jordan, Kuwait, Netherlands, Qatar, Turkey, United States, United Kingdom)
Mandate of the Independent Expert on protection against violence and discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Mexico, Uruguay), mandate renewal
Casualty recording and the promotion and protection of human rights (Liechtenstein, Croatia, Costa Rica, Sierra Leone)
Human rights and climate change (Bangladesh, Philippines, Viet Nam)
Access to medicines and vaccines in the context of the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health (Brazil, China, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Senegal, South Africa, Thailand)
Enhancement of international cooperation in the field of human rights (NAM)
Independence and impartiality of the judiciary, jurors and assessors, and the independence of lawyers (Hungary, Australia, Botswana, Maldives, Mexico, Thailand)
Human rights and the regulation of civilian acquisition, possession and use of firearms (Ecuador, Peru)
Human rights in Belarus, mandate renewal (European Union)
Human rights in Eritrea, mandate renewal (European Union)
The promotion and protection of human rights in the context of peaceful protest (Switzerland, Costa Rica)
Situation of human rights of Rohingya Muslims and other minorities in Myanmar (OIC)
Accelerating efforts to eliminate all forms of violence against women (Canada), mandate renewal
Mandate of the Special Rapporteur on the human rights of internally displaced persons (Austria, Honduras, Uganda), mandate renewal
Adoption of Universal Periodic Review (UPR) reports
During this session, the Council will adopt the UPR working group reports on Myanmar, Togo, Syrian Arab Republic, Iceland, Venezuela, Zimbabwe, Lithuania, Uganda, Timor-Leste, Republic of Moldova, South Sudan, Haiti and Sudan.
Panel discussions
During each Council session, panel discussions are held to provide member States and NGOs with opportunities to hear from subject-matter experts and raise questions. Seven panel discussions are scheduled for this upcoming session:
Panel discussion on the root causes of human rights violations and abuses against Rohingya Muslims and other minorities in Myanmar
Panel discussion on menstrual hygiene management, human rights and gender equality
Panel discussion on good governance in the promotion and protection of human rights during and after the COVID-19 pandemic
Annual full-day discussion on the human rights of women
Panel discussion on the adverse impact of climate change on the full and effective enjoyment of human rights by people in vulnerable situations
High-level panel discussion on countering the negative impact of disinformation on the enjoyment and realization of human rights
Annual thematic panel discussion on technical cooperation and capacity-building
Former Covid-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins says his apology to journalist Charlotte Bellis does not extend to the Aotearoa New Zealand government’s MIQ system generally.
Bellis, a New Zealand journalist based in Afghanistan at the time, had gone public in January with her struggle to secure a spot in the managed isolation and quarantine (MIQ) hotels while pregnant.
Hipkins publicly apologised to her in a statement this morning, admitting her MIQ application was deactivated in error and some of his comments about her case had been wrong.
He later told reporters there was no settlement payment involved, and both parties wanted to leave the matter behind them.
“We’ve concluded the matter. I’ve conveyed to her privately and now publicly my apology and she’s indicated she wants to leave it at that — and I’m happy to do that too,” he said.
“Right at the beginning, clearly there were a few things that got lost in communication, lost in translation. I do regret that and so my apology in that sense is a very genuine one.”
Hipkins was removed from the covid-19 portfolio just over a week ago, taking over police instead, with Dr Ayesha Verrall taking over the pandemic response.
Timing of the apology
He said the timing of his apology to Bellis had been agreed with her.
“She indicated that’s the timing that she wanted,” he said. “Obviously it would have ideally been better to have had this done before I gave up the covid portfolio rather than the week after, but ultimately MIQ’s been winding down now since February so I think everybody’s moved on from it.
“She indicated that she wanted something more public. I was happy to do that, it took a little bit of time to negotiate that and to get all of that ironed out.”
The National and ACT parties urged the government to also apologise over the handling of MIQ generally.
Journalist Charlotte Bellis … Hipkins said the timing of his apology had been agreed with her. Image: RNZ/YouTube screenshot
National’s Covid-19 Response spokesperson Chris Bishop said if Hipkins could apologise to Bellis, “then the government can surely apologise to all the Kiwis caught up in the lottery of human misery that was MIQ”.
“The High Court has found that MIQ unjustifiably breached New Zealanders’ rights from September to December 2021. The government should do the right thing and apologise for the way MIQ operated,” he said.
“There are countless other examples that haven’t hit the headlines. Other pregnant women who couldn’t return home. Kiwis trapped offshore who watched their visas expire in the countries they were in. People who missed the deaths of cherished loved ones and the birth of new lives.”
‘Caught out spinning’
ACT leader David Seymour said the government was not apologising for the misery its policy caused, just getting caught out spinning it.
“The government has rightly apologised for spreading misinformation about a citizen’s personal circumstances, now it should apologise for running MIQ selection so inhumanely and running it four months longer than necessary at enormous cost to the taxpayer and economy,” he said.
He said then Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield had advised MIQ was no longer necessary in December last year, and the government should be apologising for the $178 million it cost to maintain through to March.
“Included in that period was Charlotte Bellis’ repeated failed attempts to get a spot, forcing her to seek refuge with the Taliban,” he said.
Hipkins said they were very different matters.
“In this particular case there were some aspects of the information that I released that were incorrect and so I absolutely have acknowledged that and have apologised for that. In terms of MIQ I will maintain — and the courts in fact have maintained — MIQ was absolutely justified,” he said.
“What the court did find … the way we allocated space in MIQ wasn’t right. We tried a number of different things during that time to try different booking systems, to try and make that system fairer.”
Not contesting court ruling
He said he acknowledged the court’s ruling and was not contesting it, but repeated that the system as a whole was justified.
“Were MIQ ever to have to happen again in the future then those responsible for it would have to find a different way of allocating space within MIQ — but MIQ itself was absolutely justified.
“It’s the reason that we were able to go as long as we did without having covid-19 in the community.
“It’s also the reason why over the summer break, people managed to have a summer break and were able to have that opportunity to get their boosters before omicron arrived in the community.”
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Home secretary Priti Patel has approved the US extradition request for journalist and Wikileaks editor Julian Assange. The Australian national, whose work on massive Iraq and Afghanistan war leaks earned him the ire of Western leaders, has been held in Belmarsh prison since 2019. Before that, he had been living in the the Ecuadorian Embassy in London since 2012.
Press organisations and allies of Assange called the decision a dark day for press freedom around the world.
His own organisation, Wikileaks, condemned the decision immediately:
BREAKING: UK Home Secretary approves extradition of WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange to the US where he would face a 175 year sentence – A dark day for Press freedom and for British democracy The decision will be appealedhttps://t.co/m1bX8STSr8pic.twitter.com/5nWlxnWqO7
And UK investigative outfit Declassified UK re-shared their graph on the connections between what they consider anti-Assange figures involved in his years-long extradition process:
Priti Patel has, shockingly, approved Julian Assange's extradition to the US.
In a statement, the US media freedom organisation Freedom of the Press said:
By continuing to extradite Assange, the Biden DOJ is ignoring the dire warnings of virtually every major civil liberties and human rights organization in the country that the case will do irreparable damage to basic press freedom rights of U.S. reporters.
Hellhole
Legendary reporter John Pilger, a stalwart ally of Assange, said Patel had condemned the Wikileaks founder to “an American hellhole”:
Home Secretary Priti Patel has approved the extradition of Julian #Assange to an American hellhole. A new appeal will now challenge the political rottenness of British 'justice'. Either we raise our voices as never before, or our silence colludes in the death of an heroic man.
Meanwhile US journalist Kevin Gozstola, who closely covered the Assange extradition proceedings, warned that press freedom was diminishing all over the world with the decision:
The state of press freedom in the world darkens. UK Home Secretary Priti Patel served the US government and approved the extradition of jailed journalist and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange for a US trial.
And even mainstream journalists like John Simpson added their voices, warning that the implications of the decision would have far-reaching consequences for journalists everywhere:
Journalists in Britain and elsewhere will be very worried by the decision to extradite Julian Assange to the US — both for his own well-being & for the precedent it creates for journalism worldwide.
A former UN expert on global democracy and equity said the extradition evidenced “the breakdown of the rule of law in the UK”:
The decision of the UK Home Secretary to extradite Assange to the US merely confirms what everyone knows, the breakdown of the rule of law in the UK and the subservicence of the judiciary to the executive.
Moreover, journalist Matt Kennard tweeted a screenshot of the famous Collateral Murder video. The leaked film showing a US helicopter murdering civilians, including civilians in Iraq, was one of Wikileaks’s most powerful exposes:
They want Assange dead or silenced forever because he drew back the curtain and let us get a view of how the world really works.
It’s that simple. Assange is the proxy but the war is on your right to know. The war is on democracy itself. Killing him is just one stage of it. pic.twitter.com/ZBso5YTn4A
He is a journalist and a publisher, and he is being punished for doing his job
Wikileaks confirmed they would appeal against the extradition. Powerful forces are aligned against Assange, and many journalists must worry for their own safety. Especially when they see other reporters treated in this way by two ostensibly democratic states like the UK and US.
Several Afghans are among more than 100 migrants due to be sent to Rwanda on the first flight next week, according to campaigners seeking legal action against the policy.
Nine people who fled to the UK after the Taliban takeover have been notified by the Home Office that they could be removed to the East African nation on Tuesday, Care4Calais – one of a number of organisations taking the Government to court over the plan – said.
The group said it is also aware of around 35 Sudanese, 18 Syrians, 14 Iranians, 11 Egyptians as well as Iraqi, Pakistani, Albanian, Algerian, Chadian, Eritrean, Turkish and Vietnamese people who have been told they could be put on the inaugural flight.
The Home Office has refused to confirm the nationalities of those on board but only Rwandans are exempt from the policy, suggesting that those fleeing conflict – such as in Afghanistan and Ukraine – could be considered for removal if they are deemed to have arrived in the UK illegally under new immigration rules.
“Flawed”
Clare Moseley, founder of Care4Calais, told the PA news agency:
The logic to this plan is flawed in many ways. Just one example is that Afghans escaping from the Taliban under our settlement scheme are protected whereas those arriving in other ways will be sent to Rwanda.
Figures published by the department last month showed people fleeing Afghanistan made up almost a quarter of the migrants crossing the Channel in the first three months of the year.
This was the most out of any nationality recorded, followed by 16% who were Iranian and 15% Iraqi – which both typically outrank Afghans in the numbers.
The rise prompted concerns from campaigners that the Government’s resettlement scheme designed to help Afghans seek sanctuary in the UK in the wake of the Taliban takeover is failing and raised questions over whether Afghans could face being sent to Rwanda.
Anyone who the department considers has taken a dangerous, unnecessary or illegal journey to the UK would meet the criteria for removal to Rwanda, apart from lone migrant children who are exempt.
While officials are likely to focus on removing single adults in the initial phases of the scheme, there is the prospect families with children could be considered for removal under the policy.
Legal challenges
The charity has joined the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS) and Detention Action in seeking a judicial review of the policy – which they have described as “unlawful” – in the High Court, with a hearing due on Friday.
Lawyers for almost 100 migrants have already submitted legal challenges asking to stay in the UK, the charity said, with the remaining 31 lined up for the flight anticipated to follow suit this week.
The wave of legal action has cast doubt on whether the flight will be able to go ahead as planned.
But the Prime Minister’s official spokesman said:
We remain confident in our position, should the legal challenges require us going to the courts we will argue our case. It’s true to say the first flight is due for next week so we have that ready to go.
So far this year 10,020 migrants have crossed the Channel to the UK, analysis of Government figures by the PA news agency shows.
No crossings were recorded on Wednesday, according to the Ministry of Defence (MoD).
Actress Dame Emma Thompson, who has an adopted son from Rwanda, has described the scheme as “eye-wateringly mad and callous” in an interview with Sky News’ Beth Rigby, adding that the Government’s approach “does not represent the soul of this country”.
Former minister Jesse Norman, who withdrew his longstanding support of Boris Johnson ahead of the confidence vote earlier this week, branded the policy:
ugly, likely to be counterproductive and doubtful of legality.
Meanwhile a Twitter account entitled “Our Home Office”, purporting to be run by staff in the department, has been set up expressing its support for refugees amid reports that some civil servants have opposed the plan.
But it is understood senior Home Office officials are not aware of any staff who have refused to work on the policy.
Group who worked with UK media to sue government over failure to relocate them to Britain
A group of Afghan journalists who worked closely with the UK media for years have revealed how they face beatings, death threats and months in hiding, and accuse the government of reneging on a pledge to bring them to Britain.
Having fought in vain for clearance to come to the UK since the return of Taliban rule last summer, the eight journalists are now taking legal action against the government. They have applied for a judicial review after waiting months for their applications to relocate to the UK to be processed. They report only receiving standard response emails from the Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy (Arap) programme.
People fleeing Afghanistan made up almost a quarter of the migrants crossing the Channel in the first three months of the year.
Out of 4,540 people detected arriving by small boats between January and March 2022, some 24% (1,094) were Afghan nationals, according to Home Office figures.
This was the most out of any nationality recorded, followed by 16% who were Iranian (722) and 15% (681) Iraqi – which both typically outrank Afghans in the numbers.
Taliban takeover
The rise has prompted concerns from campaigners that the Government’s resettlement scheme in the wake of the Taliban takeover is failing and raised questions over whether Afghans could be at risk of being deported to Rwanda because they could be deemed to have arrived in the UK illegally under new immigration rules.
(PA Graphics)
It comes as separate figures showed the number of asylum claims made in the UK has climbed to its highest in nearly two decades, while the backlog of cases waiting to be determined continues to soar.
Dangerous routes
Marley Morris, from think tank the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR), said:
Today’s migration stats show a shocking rise in the number of Afghans arriving in the UK on small boats. The government has said it is giving Afghans a ‘warm welcome’, but these figures reveal that many have felt they have been left with no option but to take this dangerous route to make it to the UK.
Morris also added:
Now the government’s new plans in response to the Channel crossings could mean that Afghan asylum seekers will be sent to Rwanda. This would be an unimaginably awful outcome for people who have already faced such great hardship.
Contrary to the government’s claims, there are few safe routes for people forced into small boats to make it to the UK.
Enver Solomon, chief executive of the Refugee Council, said:
The sharp increase in the numbers of people fleeing Taliban atrocities in Afghanistan, having no choice but to make desperate journeys over the Channel to find safety here in the UK, is concerning but unsurprising.
This increase is the inevitable consequence of the restrictive nature of the Afghanistan resettlement schemes, for which the vast majority of Afghans are simply ineligible.
Solomon continued:
The government must honour the promises they made to the people of Afghanistan by immediately ensuring the most vulnerable people in the country are able to access a safe route to the UK, so they are not forced to risk their lives in order to find safety here.
Dr Peter William Walsh, senior researcher at the Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford said:
The arrival of Afghans in small boats on the UK coast indicates that many more wish to find protection here than are able to do so under the UK government’s existing schemes.
Questions remain
The Government pledged to resettle 20,000 refugees, with as many as 5,000 in the first year under the Afghan Citizens Resettlement Scheme (ACRS).
It relocated the first people on January 6 2022 once the scheme opened some six months after the Taliban took over the country’s capital Kabul in August. But questions remain over its progress to date.
Meanwhile, an estimated 7,000 people have been relocated under the existing Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy (ARAP) which launched in April last year and offers priority relocation to the UK for current or former locally employed staff who had been assessed to be under serious threat to life.
The official Government figures on Channel crossings also show most of the people who made the crossing (89%) were male, the same as the average between 2018 and 2021.
Some 3,448 men were recorded to have made the journey in the three-month period, as well as 342 women and 743 children, of which 594 were boys and 142 were girls, with seven recorded as unknown.
But information on age, gender and nationality was not available for some arrivals.
The average number of migrants on board each boat crossing the Channel almost doubled in the first three months of this year compared to the same period in 2021, up from 18 to 32.
Crossings took place on 30 out of the 90 days.
Some 9,330 migrants have reached the UK after navigating busy shipping lanes from France in small boats such as dinghies since the start of 2022, according to analysis of Government data by the PA news agency.
A total of 28,526 people made the crossing in 2021, compared with 8,466 in 2020, 1,843 in 2019 and 299 in 2018, according to official figures.
Fawzia Amini advocates for rights of Afghan women and girls from London hotel room she’s been stuck in for nine months
One of Afghanistan’s top female judges has been honoured with an international human rights award while she continues her work to advocate for her country’s women and girls from a London hotel.
Fawzia Amini, 48, fled Afghanistan last summer after the Taliban takeover of the country. She had been one of Afghanistan’s leading female judges, former head of the legal department at the Ministry of Women, senior judge in the supreme court, and head of the violence against women court.
Patrick Slater, from the Vermont Law School, reports in Jurist.org of 18 May 2022 that the Taliban authorities in Afghanistan announced that the country’s Human Rights Commission will be dissolved, calling it “unnecessary.”
The Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) was the national human rights institution of Afghanistan, dedicated to the promotion, protection, and monitoring of human rights and the investigation of human rights abuses.
Following the Taliban capture of the country in 2021, the AIHRC has been unable to carry out its work, due to confiscation of he human rights commission’s “buildings, vehicles and computers”
Along with the Commission, four other departments were dissolved. The Taliban faces a $500 million budget deficit, and the dissolution of these agencies was deemed necessary to avert a financial disaster. In addition to the Human Rights Commission, key agencies such as the National Security Council and the High Council for National Reconciliation have been dissolved.
Afghan civil society groups are opposing the effort by a group of 9/11 families and other U.S. victims to seize billions of dollars from the Central Bank of Afghanistan to satisfy judgments against the Taliban. In an amicus brief filed yesterday, they argue that the $3.5 billion in blocked assets belongs to the people of Afghanistan and should be used to stabilize the economy and alleviate the humanitarian catastrophe there.
On 24 April – Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day – the Aurora Humanitarian Initiative announced the names of 2022 Aurora Humanitarians, chosen for their exceptional impact, courage, and commitment to putting themselves at risk to help others. One of the Humanitarians will later be named the 2022 Aurora Prize Laureate.
“Such exceptional modern-day heroes remind us that even in the darkest times, a brighter future is in the hands of those who believe in it and are willing to do extraordinary things to protect it. Many of us may feel overwhelmed by the seemingly endless tide of human sorrow and suffering we face today, but the Aurora Humanitarians remain beacons of compassion, guiding and inspiring humanity. It is an honor for me to be part of the Initiative that recognizes and supports them,” said Lord Ara Darzi, Chair of the Aurora Prize Selection Committee and Director of the Institute of Global Health Innovation at Imperial College London.
The 2022 Aurora Humanitarians are:
Jamila Afghani (Afghanistan), a peace activist and founder of the Noor Educational and Capacity Development Organization (NECDO) who has dedicated over 25 years of her life to giving the women of Afghanistan access to education. After the Taliban took over her country, Jamila Afghani was forced to flee her homeland – but she hasn’t given up on its people.
Hadi Jumaan (Yemen), a peace activist, mediator, and body collector from Yemen who regularly risks his life to facilitate the exchange of prisoners of war and recover human remains from the frontlines. As the country continues to experience a prolonged political and humanitarian crisis caused by the civil war, Mr. Jumaan brings to the families the only solace left to them – the knowledge that their loved and lost ones may finally rest in peace.
Mahienour El-Massry (Egypt), a lawyer and political activist from Egypt who promotes political freedoms and human rights in the country by organizing peaceful protests and defending political prisoners in courts. In Egypt, voicing disagreement with the official policy can be dangerous, and Mahienour El-Massry has been detained and put in jail several times for her activism. Nevertheless, she remains optimistic about the future of her country and committed to being an agent of positive change. [see also: https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2020/11/29/2020-award-of-european-bars-associations-ccbe-goes-to-seven-egyptian-lawyers-who-are-in-prison/]
“As one of the Aurora Prize Laureates, I have witnessed the impact of support and recognition on the international level. The Aurora Humanitarian Initiative gives activists and human rights defenders, often operating on their own, a way to promote and elevate their work so they can achieve even more. I would like to congratulate the 2022 Aurora Humanitarians and wish them all the best in their activities,” said 2021 Aurora Prize Laureate Julienne Lusenge, co-founder of Women’s Solidarity for Inclusive Peace and Development (SOFEPADI) and Fund for Congolese Women (FFC).
In accordance with the tradition, the names of the 2022 Aurora Humanitarians are inscribed in the Chronicles of Aurora, a unique 21st century manuscript containing the depictions of the Aurora Humanitarian Initiative activities, and the tome will be displayed for the public in the Matenadaran.
The silence from NGOs in Afghanistan makes me question if humanitarianism has become just a market-driven industry
When I was covering the bloody conflict in Afghanistan as a journalist, the most credible first-hand knowledge on the ground often came from the local frontline humanitarian workers, but I seldom saw their powerful organisations call a spade a spade about what the warring factions dubbed “collateral damage”.
That made me question the whole humanitarian world. Is it comprised of silent rescue and relief entities with no interest or responsibility for holding the perpetrators accountable for the many heinous crimes?
Zbigniew Brzezinski’s book The Grand Chessboard was published 25 years ago. His assumptions and strategies for maintaining U.S. global dominance have been hugely influential in US foreign policy. As the conflict in Ukraine evolves, with the potential of escalating into world war, we can see where this policy leads and how crucial it is to re-evaluate.
The need to dominate Eurasia
The basic premise of The Grand Chessboard is outlined in the introduction:
with the collapse of the Soviet Union, the United States is the sole global power
Europe and Asia (Eurasia) together have the largest land area, population and economy
U.S. must control Eurasia and prevent another country from challenging US dominance
Brzezinski sums up the situation: “America is now the only global superpower, and Eurasia is the globe’s central arena.” He adds “It is imperative that no Eurasian challenger emerges, capable of dominating Eurasia and thus of challenging America.”
The book surveys the different nations in Eurasia, from Japan in the east to the UK in the west. The entire land mass of Europe and Asia is covered. This is the “grand chessboard” and Brzezinski analyzes how the US should “play” different pieces on the board to keep potential rivals down and the US in control.
Brzezinski’s Influence
Brzezinski was a very powerful National Security Advisor to President Carter. Before that, he founded the Trilateral Commission. Later he taught Madeline Albright and many other key figures in US foreign policy.
Brzezinski initiated the “Afghanistan Trap”. That was the secret 1979 US program to mobilize and support mujahedin foreign fighters to invade and destabilize Afghanistan. In this period, Afghanistan was undergoing dramatic positive changes. As described by Canadian academic John Ryan, “Afghanistan once had a progressive secular government, with broad popular support. It had enacted progressive reforms and gave equal rights to women.”
The Brzezinski plan was to utilize reactionary local forces and foreign fighters to create enough mayhem that the government would ask the neighboring Soviet Union to send military support. The overall goal was to “bog down the Soviet army” and “give them their own Vietnam”.
With enormous funding from the US and Saudi Arabia beginning in 1978, the plan resulted in chaos, starvation and bloodshed in Afghanistan which continues to today. Approximately 6 million Afghans became refugees fleeing the chaos and war.
Years later, when interviewed about this policy, Brzezinski was proud and explicit: “We didn’t push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would.” When asked if he had regrets for the decades of mayhem in Afghanistan, he was clear: “Regret what? That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it? …. Moscow had to carry on a war that was unsustainable for the regime, a conflict that brought about the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire…. What is more important in world history? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some agitated Muslims or the liberation of central Europe and the end of the Cold War?”
Afghanistan was a pawn in the US campaign against the Soviet Union. The amorality of US foreign policy is clear and consistent, from the destruction of Afghanistan beginning in 1978 continuing to the current starvation caused by US freezing of Afghan government reserves.
The blow-back is also clear. The foreign fighters trained by the US and Saudis became Al Qaeda and then ISIS. The 2016 Orlando nightclub massacre, where 49 died and 53 were wounded was perpetrated by the son of an Afghan refugee who never would have come to the US if his country had not been intentionally destabilized. Paul Fitzgerald eloquently describes the tragedy in his article Brzezinski’s vision to lure Soviets into Afghan Trap now Orlando’s nightmare.
US Supremacy and Exceptionalism
The Grand Chessboard assumes US supremacy and exceptionalism and adds the strategy for implementing and enforcing this “primacy” on the biggest and most important arena: Eurasia.
Brzezinski does not countenance a multi-polar world. “A world without US primacy will be a world with more violence and disorder and less democracy and economic growth ….” and “The only real alternative to American global leadership in the foreseeable future is international anarchy.”
These assertions continue today as the US foreign policy establishment repeatedly talks about the “rules based order” and “international community”, ignoring the fact that the West is a small fraction of humanity. Toward the end of his book, Brzezinski suggests the “upgrading” the United Nations and a “new distribution of responsibilities and privileges” that take into account the “changed realities of global power.”
The importance of NATO and Ukraine
With the dissolution of the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact, many people in the West believed NATO was no longer needed. NATO claimed to be strictly a defensive alliance and its only rival had disbanded.
Brzezinski and other US hawks saw that NATO could be used to expand US hegemony and keep weapons purchases flowing. Thus he wrote that, “an enlarged NATO will serve well both the short-term and the longer-term goals of U.S. policy.”
Brzezinski was adamant that Russian concerns or fears should be dismissed. “Any accommodation with Russia on the issue of NATO enlargement should not entail an outcome that has the effect of making Russia a de facto decision making member of the alliance.” Brzezinski was skillful at presenting an aggressive and offensive policy in the best light.
Brzezinski presents Ukraine as the pivotal country for containing Russia. He says, “Ukraine is the critical state, insofar as Russia’s future evolution is concerned.” He says, “Without Ukraine, Russia ceases to be a Eurasian empire.” This is another example of his skillful wording because Ukraine as part of a hostile military alliance does not only prevent a Russian “empire”; it presents a potential threat. Kyiv is less than 500 miles from Moscow and Ukraine was a major route of the Nazi invasion.
Brzezinski was well aware of the controversial nature of Ukraine’s borders. On page 104 he gives a quote that shows many people of eastern Ukraine wanted out of Ukraine since the breakup of the Soviet Union. The 1996 quote from a Moscow newspaper reports, “In the foreseeable future events in eastern Ukraine confront Russia with a very difficult problem. Mass manifestations of discontent … will be accompanied by appeals to Russia, or even demands, to take over the region.”
Despite this reality, Brzezinski is dismissive of Russian rights and complaints. He bluntly says, “ Europe is America’s essential geopolitical bridgehead on the Eurasian continent.” and “Western Europe and increasingly Central Europe remain largely an American protectorate.” The unstated assumption is that the US has every right to dominate Eurasia from afar.
Brzezinski advises Russia to decentralize with the free market and a loose confederation of “European Russia, a Siberian Russia and a Far Eastern Republic”.
Afghanistan is the model
Brzezinski realizes that Russia presents a potential challenge to US domination of Eurasia, especially if it allies with China. In the “Grand Chessboard”, he writes, “If the middle space rebuffs the West, becomes an assertive single entity, and either gains control over the South or forms an alliance with the major Eastern actor, then America’s primacy in Eurasia shrinks dramatically.” Russia is the “middle space” and China is the “major Eastern actor”.
What was feared by the US strategist has happened: For the past 20 years, Russia and China have been building an alliance dedicated to ending US hegemony and beginning a new era in international relations.
This may be why the US aggressively provoked the crisis in Ukraine. The list of provocations is clear: moral and material support for Maidan protests, rejection of the EU agreement (“F*** the EU”), the sniper murders and violent 2014 coup, ignoring the Minsk Agreement approved by the UN Security Council, NATO advisors and training for ultra-nationalists, lethal weaponry to Ukraine, refusal to accept Ukrainian non-membership in NATO, threats to invade Donbass and Crimea.
Before Russia’s intervention in Ukraine, active duty soldier and former Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard said, “They actually want Russia to invade Ukraine. Why would they? Because it gives the Biden administration a clear excuse to levy draconian sanctions… against Russia and the Russian people and number two, it cements this cold war in place. The military industrial complex is the one who benefits from this. They clearly control the Biden administration. Warmongers on both sides in Washington who have been drumming up these tensions. If they get Russia to invade Ukraine it locks in this new cold war, the military industrial complex starts to make a ton more money …. Who pays the price? The American people … the Ukrainian people … the Russian people pay the price. It undermines our own national security but the military industrial complex which controls so many of our elected officials wins and they run to the bank.”
This is accurate but the reasons for the provocations go deeper. Hillary Clinton recently summed up the wishes and dreams of Washington hawks: “The Russians invaded Afghanistan back in 1980 … a lot of countries supplied arms, advice and even some advisors to those who were recruited to fight Russia….a well funded insurgency basically drove the Russians out of Afghanistan…. I think that is the model people are now looking toward.”
US foreign policy has been consistent from Brzezinski to Madeline Albright, Hillary Clinton and on to Victoria Nuland. The results are seen in Aghanistan, Iraq, Yugoslavia, Libya, Syria and now Ukraine.
As with Afghanistan, the US “didn’t push Russia to intervene” but “knowingly increased the probability that they would.” The purpose is the same in both cases: to use a pawn to undermine and potentially eliminate a rival. We expect the US will make every to prolong the bloodshed and war, to bog down the Russian army and prevent a peaceful settlement. The US goal is just what Joe Biden said: regime change in Moscow.
Like Afghanistan, Ukraine is just a pawn on the chessboard.
Days before Imran Khan’s ouster on April 10 as prime minister in a no-trust motion in the parliament orchestrated by foreign powers, two impersonators were arrested in Washington for posing as US federal security officials and cultivating access to the Secret Service, which protects President Joe Biden, one of whom claimed ties to Pakistani intelligence.
Justice department assistant attorney Joshua Rothstein asked a judge not to release Arian Taherzadeh and Haider Ali, the men arrested on April 6 for posing as Department of Homeland Security investigators for two years before the arrest, the Guardian reported on April 8.
The men also stand accused of providing lucrative favors to members of the Secret Service, including one agent on the security detail of the first lady, Jill Biden. Prosecutors said in court filings they seized a cache of weapons from multiple DC apartments tied to the defendants.
Federal prosecutor Rothstein alleged one of the suspects, Haider Ali, “made claims to witnesses that he had connections to the ISI, Pakistan’s military intelligence service.” The Department of Justice (DoJ) is treating the case as a criminal matter and not a national security issue. But the Secret Service suspended four agents over their involvement with the suspects.
“All personnel involved in this matter are on administrative leave and are restricted from accessing Secret Service facilities, equipment, and systems,” the Secret Service said in a statement.
Clearly, planning and preparations were underway to declare Pakistan a rogue actor sponsoring acts of subversion against the United States. Soon after the US-led “regime change” in Pakistan and the formation of government by imperialist stooges, however, the tone of the judge and prosecutors changed. The defendants were released on bail and placed in home detention, though they will not be allowed to go to airports or foreign embassies or to talk to any of the federal agents they allegedly duped.
During his hour-long ruling, Magistrate Judge Michael Harvey lambasted the Justice Department’s claims that the men were dangerous, were trying to compromise agents and were tied to a foreign government, the CNN reported on April 13.
Before his ouster as prime minister in a no-trust motion in the parliament on April 10, Imran Khan claimed that Pakistan’s Ambassador to US, Asad Majeed, was warned by Assistant Secretary of State Donald Lu that Khan’s continuation in office would have repercussions for bilateral ties between the two nations.
Shireen Mazari, a Pakistani politician who served as the Federal Minister for Human Rights under the Imran Khan government, quoted Donald Lu as saying: “If Prime Minister Imran Khan remained in office, then Pakistan will be isolated from the United States and we will take the issue head on; but if the vote of no-confidence succeeds, all will be forgiven.”
During Imran Khan’s historic two-day official visit to Moscow on the eve of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, besides signing several bilateral contracts in agricultural and energy sectors, President Putin reportedly offered Imran Khan the S-300 air defense system, Sukhoi aircraft as replacement for the Pakistan Air Force’s dependence on American F-16s and an array of advanced Russian military equipment on the condition that Pakistan abandons its traditional alliance with Washington and forge defense ties with Russia, according to two government officials who accompanied Imran Khan on the Moscow visit.
Alongside China, India and Iran, Pakistan under the leadership of Imran Khan was one of the few countries that adopted a non-aligned stance and refused to condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, despite diplomatic pressure from Washington.
After the United States “nation-building project” failed in Afghanistan during its two-decade occupation of the embattled country from Oct. 2001 to August 2021, it accused regional powers of lending covert support to Afghan insurgents battling the occupation forces.
The occupation and Washington’s customary blame game accusing “malign regional forces” of insidiously destabilizing Afghanistan and undermining US-led “benevolent imperialism” instead of accepting responsibility for its botched invasion and occupation of Afghanistan brought Pakistan and Russia closer against a common adversary in their backyard, and the two countries even managed to forge defense ties, particularly during the four years of the Imran Khan government from July 2018 to April 2022.
Since the announcement of a peace deal with the Taliban by the Trump administration in Feb. 2020, regional powers, China and Russia in particular, hosted international conferences and invited the representatives of the US-backed Afghanistan government and the Taliban for peace negotiations.
After the departure of US forces from “the graveyard of the empires,” although Washington is trying to starve the hapless Afghan masses to death in retribution for inflicting a humiliating defeat on the global hegemon by imposing economic sanctions on the Taliban government and browbeating international community to desist from lending formal diplomatic recognition or having trade relations with Afghanistan, China and Russia have provided generous humanitarian and developmental assistance to Afghanistan.
Imran Khan fell from the grace of the Biden administration, whose record-breaking popularity ratings plummeted after the precipitous fall of US in Kabul last August, reminiscent of the Fall of US in Saigon in April 1975, with Chinook helicopters hovering over US embassy evacuating diplomatic staff to the airport, and Washington accused Pakistan for the debacle.
Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley squeamishly described the Kabul takeover in his historic Congressional testimony that several hundred Pashtun cowboys riding on motorbikes and brandishing Kalashnikovs overran Kabul without a shot being fired, and the world’s most lethal military force fled with tail neatly folded between legs, hastily evacuating diplomatic staff from sprawling 36-acre US embassy in Chinook helicopters to airport secured by the insurgents.
Apart from indiscriminate B-52 bombing raids mounted by Americans, Afghan security forces didn’t put up serious resistance anywhere in Afghanistan and simply surrendered territory to the Taliban. The fate of Afghanistan was sealed as soon as the US forces evacuated Bagram airbase in the dead of the night on July 1, six weeks before the inevitable fall of Kabul on August 15.
The sprawling Bagram airbase was the nerve center from where all the operations across Afghanistan were directed, specifically the vital air support to the US-backed Afghan security forces without which they were simply irregular militias waiting to be devoured by the wolves.
In southern Afghanistan, the traditional stronghold of the Pashtun ethnic group from which the Taliban draws most of its support, the Taliban military offensive was spearheaded by Mullah Yaqoob, the illustrious son of the Taliban’s late founder Mullah Omar and the newly appointed defense minister of the Taliban government, as district after district in southwest Afghanistan, including the birthplace of the Taliban movement Kandahar and Helmand, fell in quick succession.
What has stunned military strategists and longtime observers of the Afghan war, though, was the Taliban’s northern blitz, occupying almost the whole of northern Afghanistan in a matter of weeks, as northern Afghanistan was the bastion of the Northern Alliance comprising the Tajik and Uzbek ethnic groups. In recent years, however, the Taliban has made inroads into the heartland of the Northern Alliance, too.
The ignominious fall of Kabul clearly demonstrates the days of American hegemony over the world are numbered. If ragtag Taliban militants could liberate their homeland from imperialist clutches without a fight, imagine what would happen if the United States confronted equal military powers such as Russia and China. The much-touted myth of American military supremacy is clearly more psychological than real.
Imran Khan is an educated and charismatic leader. Being an Oxford graduate, he is much better informed than most Pakistani politicians. And he is a liberal at heart. Most readers might disagree with the assertion due to his fierce anti-imperialism and West-bashing demagoguery, but allow me to explain.
It’s not just Imran Khan’s celebrity lifestyle that makes him a progressive. He also derives his intellectual inspiration from the Western tradition. The ideal role model in his mind is the Scandinavian social democratic model which he has mentioned on numerous occasions, especially in his speech at Karachi before a massive rally of singing and cheering crowd in December 2012.
His relentless anti-imperialism as a political stance should be viewed in the backdrop of Western military interventions in the Islamic countries. The conflagration that neocolonial powers have caused in the Middle East evokes strong feelings of resentment among Muslims all over the world. Moreover, Imran Khan also uses anti-America rhetoric as an electoral strategy to attract conservative masses, particularly the impressionable youth.
It’s also noteworthy that Imran Khan’s political party draws most of its electoral support from women, youth voters and Pakistani expats residing in the Gulf and Western countries. All these segments of society, especially the women, are drawn more toward egalitarian liberalism than patriarchal conservatism, because liberalism promotes women’s rights and its biggest plus point is its emphasis on equality, emancipation and empowerment of women who constitute over half of population in every society.
Imran Khan’s ouster from power for daring to stand up to the United States harks back to the toppling and subsequent assassination of Pakistan’s first elected prime minister, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, in April 1979 by the martial law regime of Gen. Zia-ul-Haq.
The United States not only turned a blind eye but tacitly approved the elimination of Bhutto from Pakistan’s political scene because, being a socialist, Bhutto not only nurtured cordial ties with communist China but was also courting Washington’s arch-rival, the former Soviet Union.
The Soviet Union played the role of a mediator at the signing of the Tashkent Agreement for the cessation of hostilities following the 1965 India-Pakistan War over the disputed Kashmir region, in which Bhutto represented Pakistan as the foreign minister of the Gen. Ayub Khan-led government.
Like Imran Khan, the United States “deep state” regarded Bhutto as a political liability and an obstacle in the way of mounting the Operation Cyclone to provoke the Soviet Union into invading Afghanistan and the subsequent waging of a decade-long war of attrition, using Afghan jihadists as cannon fodder who were generously funded, trained and armed by the CIA and Pakistan’s security agencies in the Af-Pak border regions, in order to “bleed the Soviet forces” and destabilize and weaken the rival global power.
Karl Marx famously said: “History repeats itself, first as a tragedy and then as a farce.” In addition to a longstanding CIA program aimed at cultivating an anti-Russian insurgency in Ukraine by training, arming and international legitimizing neo-Nazi militias in Donbas, Canada’s Department of National Defense revealed on January 26, two days following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, that the Canadian Armed Forces had trained “nearly 33,000 Ukrainian military and security personnel in a range of tactical and advanced military skills.” While the United Kingdom, via Operation Orbital, had trained 22,000 Ukrainian fighters.
A “prophetic” RAND Corporation report titled “Overextending and Unbalancing Russia” published in 2019 declares the stated goal of American policymakers is “to undermine Russia just as the US subversively destabilized the former Soviet Union during the Cold War,” and predicts to the letter the crisis unfolding in Ukraine as a consequence of the eight-year proxy war mounted by NATO in Russian-majority Donbas region in east Ukraine on Russia’s vulnerable western flank since the 2014 Maidan coup, toppling Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych and consequent annexation of the Crimean Peninsula by Russia.
Nonetheless, regarding the objectives of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979, then American envoy to Kabul, Adolph “Spike” Dubs, was assassinated on the Valentine’s Day, on 14 Feb 1979, the same day that Iranian revolutionaries stormed the American embassy in Tehran.
The former Soviet Union was wary that its forty-million Muslims were susceptible to radicalism, because Islamic radicalism was infiltrating across the border into the Central Asian States from Afghanistan. Therefore, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in December 1979 in support of the Afghan communists to forestall the likelihood of Islamist insurgencies spreading to the Central Asian States bordering Afghanistan.
According to documents declassified by the White House, CIA and State Department in January 2019, as reported by Tim Weiner for the Washington Post, the CIA was aiding Afghan jihadists before the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979. President Jimmy Carter signed the CIA directive to arm the Afghan jihadists in July 1979, whereas the former Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in December the same year.
The revelation doesn’t come as a surprise, though, because more than two decades before the declassification of the State Department documents, in the 1998 interview to CounterPunch magazine, former National Security Advisor to President Jimmy Carter, Zbigniew Brzezinski, confessed that the president signed the directive to provide secret aid to the Afghan jihadists in July 1979, whereas the Soviet Army invaded Afghanistan six months later in December 1979.
Here is a poignant excerpt from the interview. The interviewer puts the question: “And neither do you regret having supported the Islamic jihadists, having given arms and advice to future terrorists?” Brzezinski replies: “What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet Empire? Some stirred-up Muslims or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the Cold War?”
Despite the crass insensitivity, one must give credit to Zbigniew Brzezinski that at least he had the courage to speak the unembellished truth. It’s worth noting, however, that the aforementioned interview was recorded in 1998. After the 9/11 terror attack, no Western policymaker can now dare to be as blunt and forthright as Brzezinski.
Regardless, that the CIA was arming the Afghan jihadists six months before the Soviets invaded Afghanistan has been proven by the State Department’s declassified documents; fact of the matter, however, is that the nexus between the CIA, Pakistan’s security agencies and the Gulf states to train and arm the Afghan jihadists against the former Soviet Union was forged years before the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
Pakistan joined the American-led, anticommunist SEATO and CENTO regional alliances in the 1950s and played the role of Washington’s client state since its inception in 1947. So much so that when a United States U-2 spy plane was shot down by the Soviet Air Defense Forces while performing photographic aerial reconnaissance deep into Soviet territory, Pakistan’s then President Ayub Khan openly acknowledged the reconnaissance aircraft flew from an American airbase in Peshawar, a city in northwest Pakistan.
Then during the 1970s, Pakistan’s then Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s government began aiding the Afghan Islamists against Sardar Daud’s government, who had toppled his first cousin King Zahir Shah in a palace coup in 1973 and had proclaimed himself the president of Afghanistan.
Sardar Daud was a Pashtun nationalist and laid claim to Pakistan’s northwestern Pashtun-majority province. Pakistan’s security agencies were alarmed by his irredentist claims and used Islamists to weaken his rule in Afghanistan. He was eventually assassinated in 1978 as a consequence of the Saur Revolution led by the Afghan communists.
It’s worth pointing out, however, that although the Bhutto government did provide political and diplomatic support on a limited scale to Islamists in their struggle for power against Pashtun nationalists in Afghanistan, being a secular and progressive politician, he would never have permitted opening the floodgates for flushing the Af-Pak region with weapons, petrodollars and radical jihadist ideology as his successor, Zia-ul-Haq, an Islamist military general, did by becoming a willing tool of religious extremism and militarism in the hands of neocolonial powers.
At the end of 2021, the global refugee population reached an unprecedented 26.6 million, with 68 percent of refugees coming from five countries: Syria, Afghanistan, South Sudan, Myanmar and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Now, Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has forced more than 4.3 million people in Ukraine to flee the country within just several weeks, making the exodus the largest movement of people in Europe since World War II.
Many large nongovernmental organizations are focusing on supporting the millions of refugees who are entering Poland. While the Polish government has been hospitable toward many white Ukrainians, it is holding some refugees of color who are fleeing Ukraine in detention camps. Meanwhile, governments and organizations in Romania and Moldova, both smaller and relatively lower-income countries compared to Poland, are scrambling to accommodate hundreds of thousands of refugees with little outside support.
“It feels like the eye of the storm right now,” said Walker Frahm, chief operations officer of Lifting Hands International, an aid organization helping refugees achieve stability and self-sufficiency. Frahm, who had spent a week and a half in Moldova and Romania in mid-March, told Truthout that about a quarter of the 400,000 refugees fleeing Ukraine who had entered Moldova remain in the country of just 2.6 million. Since the country is unable to provide shelter space to all but a fraction of refugees, Moldovan families have generously volunteered their private homes to accommodate the vast majority of them. Frahm said he had heard reports of discrimination toward refugees from Ukraine who are of Indian, Roma and African descent in the countries, although he said he didn’t witness discrimination firsthand.
Frahm said most people fleeing Ukraine did not understand why the Russian government was bombing them, and saw their stay as short-term. “They don’t consider themselves refugees,” he said. “They say, ‘Yes, I’ve been forced from my home because of war, but we’re going to go back as soon as it settles down.’”
But as Putin’s invasion drags on, grassroots networks are making plans to support people for the long haul.
There is generally an outpouring of international support when crises emerge, with piles of aid accumulating at border crossings. On-the-ground organizations can quickly become overwhelmed unless they have proper places to store items. To solve this problem, an informal, loosely connected grassroots aid network of about a dozen groups is working on establishing supply chains and long-term warehouse aid hubs in Moldova, Romania and Slovakia, and hope to set up hubs at halfway points in places like the Netherlands and Germany.
“We could just hop around from crisis to crisis, chasing the news cycle, but from a human perspective, from an impact perspective, we want to make sure that we don’t disappear as soon as the news goes away,” Frahms explained. “We want to be able to continue meeting needs as long as they’re there.”
Before collecting aid, Lifting Hands International conducted an on-the-ground needs assessment to ensure refugees are receiving items that they actually want and need. Then, they advertised the needs through social media and an app called JustServe. People can purchase requested items and send them directly to Lifting Hands International’s warehouse in Utah or drop them off to about 60 drop-off points throughout the state — a network that Lifting Hands International had established while supporting Afghan, Syrian, and other refugees for years. Lifting Hands International volunteers pick up aid from the drop-off points, which are mostly volunteers’ homes, and bring it to the warehouse.
Once upon a time, we thought it might be hard to fill our humanitarian aid warehouse in Utah. Now we're afraid it isn't big enough!
THANK YOU to our Utah program staff, volunteers, drop-off locations representatives, donors, and partner orgs for keeping this warehouse full! pic.twitter.com/62ZwMmLUC7
Another group called Distribute Aid — a Swedish nonprofit that has specialized in providing logistical support for humanitarian relief in the U.K., France, Lebanon, Greece, the U.S., and elsewhere — coordinates shipments for grassroots organizations, including Lifting Hands International. “We have the time and the resources to actually look at what the import and export requirements are, to make sure that people are ready to get the cheapest shipping possible for them,” Nicole Tingle, Distribute Aid’s regional director for Europe, told Truthout. “And then they can focus on running their collections, doing fundraisers, making sure that they’re building out their programs and projects to the best of their abilities.”
Lifting Hands International and Distribute Aid will be sending their first joint aid shipment container with hygiene supplies and other nonfood items from Utah to an aid hub that had been a decommissioned event center in Iași, Romania. “Our aid that is going there will support some longer-term shelters where the initial support from community members is starting to peter out and they’re anticipating there will be many unmet needs as the war drags on,” Frahm said. They’ll be sending a container to Moldova soon, where the situation is increasingly desperate.
To minimize emissions, maximize efficiency and cut shipping delivery times, Distribute Aid is also developing a supply chain visibility tool that will take stock of what items grassroots groups have and need. “With our needs assessment surveys, we ask each group what they have too much of,” said Taylor Fairbank, Distribute Aid’s operations director, “and instead of every group having to contact every other group to figure it out, they just have to fill out our one survey, and then we can do the matching on the back end and suggest trades to them.”
But they are also connecting disparate groups with each other directly. “We’ve put a lot of groups that are in countries bordering Ukraine in contact with each other in WhatsApp group chats,” said Tingle.
Black Women for Black Lives is providing direct financial support to Black people fleeing Ukraine in the face of so-called “Ukrainians First” policies, whereby members of the African diaspora who were living in Ukraine when the war started are now being held hostage in the war-torn country while white Ukrainians are allowed to flee. “In just 5 short weeks, we’ve been able to help evacuate people out of Ukraine, help them pay for food when their city was under siege and even help them afford accommodation, transportation and medical aid,” the organization wrote on its fundraiser page. After raising more than £326,000 across several platforms and helping more than 2,000 people, BW4BL stopped raising funds on April 5.
Outright International, a global LGBTQ+ human rights organization headquartered in New York City, is accepting donations for local, vetted organizations that are helping LGBTQ+ people who are fleeing Ukraine to find safe shelter.
And while the refugee solidarity movement has been delighted to see a flood of solidarity for refugees fleeing Ukraine, they note that millions of Black and Brown refugees from Syria, Afghanistan, Somalia, South Sudan, and elsewhere are still being detained in horrendous conditions across the world. A harrowing new investigative report by ProPublica, for example, revealed that U.S. shelters holding Afghan child refugees have been ill-equipped to provide them with culturally appropriate care. Some children are attempting to commit suicide, starting fights and running away, according to the report.
“These conditions are a choice that has been made again and again by political actors for their own gain — whether that be in attempting to unite voters against a common ‘enemy’ or using displaced people as bargaining chips in political disputes,” Tingle said.
In an op-ed for Al Jazeera, South Sudanese refugee, activist and writer Nhial Deng, wrote that he was pleased to see the world unite to support Ukrainians, but questioned where these world leaders, corporations and universities were when armed invaders attacked and burned his village 11 years ago. “Where were the people of goodwill offering for me to stay with them instead of being stuck in a refugee camp for a decade?” he wrote. “People can — when they want — respond to refugees at their countries’ borders with compassion and love, rather than suspicion, fear and indifference.”
Distribute Aid, Lifting Hands International, and others in the refugee solidarity movement hope that newly galvanized activists will make connections between the plights of Ukrainians and others who are forced to flee their homes.
While compassionate disaster relief efforts can make refugees’ lives easier, on their own, they ultimately won’t prevent the next mass forced displacement.
“People are fleeing climate change driven by for-profit companies, or wars driven by interests of imperialist governments,” said Fairbank. “The West is especially complicit in outsourcing the violence that is driving its economic growth on to poor Black and Brown countries and then punishing those who dare flee to safety. So not only do we have to create a welcoming atmosphere to those who make it to our borders, but we have to support grassroots movements in our own countries and around the world that are fighting back against politicians and companies who capitalize off these harmful conditions.”
The leaders of a bevy of NATO-aligned countries have appeared in a collage that reads “Stand up for Ukraine.” It comes across blatantly as propaganda cooked by a corporate PR firm as part of the information war being waged against Russia.
My question to these upstanding, er … these people standing up, is: When have you stood up for, in no particular order:
Palestine
Syria
Libya
Iraq
Afghanistan
Yemen
Iran
Democratic Republic of Congo
Somalia
Haiti
Serbia
Venezuela
Bolivia
Honduras
Nicaragua
This is, of course, an inexhaustive list. What follows is an analysis of what NATO types standing up for signifies for the first six listed countries above, along with two unlisted countries.
Palestine
According to the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem, 10,165 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli security forces since the beginning of the second intifada in September 2000, and an additional 82 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli civilians. This disregard for the life of the non-Jew is ingrained in many Talmudic Jews, as Holocaust survivor and chemistry professor Israel Shahak detailed in his book Jewish History, Jewish Religion: The Weight Of Three Thousand Years. If anyone needs convincing of this Jewish discrimination and racism towards non-Jews, then peruse the statistics at the B’Tselem website on home demolitions, who can and cannot use roads in the West Bank, the water crisis, and settler crimes against Palestinians.
On 10 April, Ghadeer Sabatin, a 45-yr-old unarmed Palestinian widow and mother of six, was shot by Israeli soldiers near Bethlehem and left to bleed out and die. Will any of the politicians standing up for Ukraine also stand up for Palestine? Image Source
Many of these Stand up for Ukraine types have been been glued to their seats during the slow-motion genocide by Zionist Jews against Palestinians.
Are Palestinians a lesser people than Ukrainians?
Syria
These Stand up for Ukraine types in their spiffy business attire have also been seated while backing Islamist terrorists in Syria. Americans later invaded and still occupy the northeastern corner of Syria, stealing the oil and wheat crops.
The UN Human Rights chief Michelle Bachelet reported that more than 350,000 people have been killed in 10 years of warring in Syria, adding that this figure was an undercount.
Are Syrians a lesser people than Ukrainians?
Libya
In February 2020, Yacoub El Hillo, the UN humanitarian coordinator for Libya, called the impact of the NATO-led war on civilians “incalculable.”
Are Libyans a lesser people than Ukrainians?
Iraq
I have a vivid memory of a crowd of students gathered around a TV screen in the University of Victoria to cheer on the start of Shock and Awe in Iraq. The US-led war on Iraq was based on the pretext that Iraq had weapons-of-mass-destruction although the head UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter had found Iraq to be “fundamentally disarmed.”
Chemistry professor professor Gideon Polya was critical of how the western monopoly media “resolutely ignore the crucial epidemiological concept of non-violent avoidable deaths (excess deaths, avoidable mortality, excess mortality, deaths that should not have happened) associated with war-imposed deprivation.” Polya cites 2.7 million Iraqi deaths from violence (1.5 million) or from violently-imposed deprivation (1.2 million).
Nonetheless, US troops are still stationed in Iraq despite being told to leave by the Iraqi government.
Are Iraqis a lesser people than Ukrainians?
Afghanistan
The Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University estimates 241,000 people have been killed in the Afghanistan and Pakistan war zone since 2001. The institute’s key findings are:
As of April 2021, more than 71,000 Afghan and Pakistani civilians are estimated to have died as a direct result of the war.
The United States military in 2017 relaxed its rules of engagement for airstrikes in Afghanistan, which resulted in a massive increase in civilian casualties.
The CIA has armed and funded Afghan militia groups who have been implicated in grave human rights abuses and killings of civilians.
Afghan land is contaminated with unexploded ordnance, which kills and injures tens of thousands of Afghans, especially children, as they travel and go about their daily chores.
The war has exacerbated the effects of poverty, malnutrition, poor sanitation, lack of access to health care, and environmental degradation on Afghans’ health.
Are Afghans a lesser people than Ukrainians?
Yemen
In November 2021, the UN Development Programme published “Assessing the Impact of War in Yemen: Pathways for Recovery” (available here) in which it was estimated that by the end of 2021, there would be 377,000 deaths in Yemen. Tragically, “In 2021, a Yemeni child under the age of five dies every nine minutes because of the conflict.” (p 12)
The Yemeni economy is being destroyed and has forced 15.6 million people into extreme immiseration along with 8.6 million people being malnourished. Worse is predicted to come: “If war in Yemen continues through 2030, we estimate that 1.3 million people will die as a result…” (p 12)
Countries such as Canada, the US, UK, France, Spain, South Africa, China, India, and Turkey that supply arms to Saudi Arabia and the UAE are complicit in the war on the Yemeni people.
Are Yemenis a lesser people than Ukrainians?
One could continue on through the above list of countries “invaded” and arrive at the same conclusions. The predominantly white faces of western heads-of-government in their suits and ties or matching jackets and skirts did not stand up for the brown-skinned people killed in the countries adumbrated. Most of these countries were, in fact, directly attacked by NATO countries or by countries that were supported by NATO. What does that imply for the Standing up for Ukraine bunch?
The Donbass Republics of Donetsk and Lugansk
And lastly, most telling, is just how many of these people stood up for Donbass when it was being shelled by Ukraine?
If France and Germany, guarantors for the Minsk Agreements that Ukraine signed, had not only guaranteed but also enforced Ukraine’s compliance, then, very arguably, no Russian recognition of the independence of the republics of Donetsk and Lugansk would have been forthcoming and there would have been no Russian military response. But France and Germany did not stand up for their roles as guarantors of the Minsk Agreements.
Consequently, for all these politicians to contradict their previous insouciance and suddenly get off their posteriors and pose as virtuous anti-war types standing up for Ukraine is nigh impossible to swallow. Given that the historical evidence belies the integrity of this Stand up for Ukraine bunch, they ought better to have striven for some consistency and remained seated.
Australia must step up diplomatic efforts to encourage the US government to drop its bid to extradite Julian Assange who has now been imprisoned for three years, says the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance.
Today marks the third anniversary of Assange’s arrest when he was dragged from the Ecuador Embassy in London on 11 April 2019 to face extradition proceedings for espionage charges laid by the US.
The WikiLeaks founder and publisher has been held at Belmarsh Prison near London ever since, where his mental and physical health has deteriorated significantly.
On this day, the MEAA calls on the Biden administration to drop the charges against Assange, which pose a threat to press freedom worldwide. The scope of the US charges imperils any journalist anywhere who writes about the US government.
MEAA media federal president Karen Percy urged the Australian government to use its close ties to both the US and the UK to end the court proceedings against him and have the charges dropped to allow Assange to return home to Australia, if that is his wish.
Assange won his initial extradition hearing in January last year, but subsequent appeals by the US government have dragged out his detention at Belmarsh.
“Julian Assange’s work with WikiLeaks was important and in the public interest: exposing evidence of war crimes and other shameful actions by US soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan,” Percy said.
Assange charges an ‘affront to journalists’
“The stories published by WikiLeaks and its mainstream media partners more than a decade ago were picked up by news outlets around the world.
“The charges against Assange are an affront to journalists everywhere and a threat to press freedom.”
The US government has not produced convincing evidence that the publishing of the leaked material endangered any lives or jeopardised military operations, but their lasting impact has been to embarrass and shame the United States.
“Yet Assange faces the prospect of jail for the rest of his life if convicted of espionage charges laid by the US Department of Justice,” Percy said.
“The case against Assange is intended to curtail free speech, criminalise journalism and frighten off any future whistleblowers and publishers with the message that they too will be punished if they step out of line.
“The US Government must see reason and drop these charges, and the Australian Government should be doing all it can to represent the interests of an Australian citizen.”
China clings to its zero-COVID approach as cases skyrocket in Shanghai; the Chinese yuan climbs to a five-year high in foreign-currency reserves; China hosts a gathering of countries to discuss ways of aiding Afghanistan; countries call on the United States to return the $7 billion in Afghan assets it stole.
Women in Afghanistan are protesting a number of gender-based restrictions from the Taliban, including an order in March to shut down public high schools for girls. In response, U.S. officials canceled talks with Taliban leaders in Doha, continuing to freeze billions in Afghan assets while Afghanistan spirals into economic catastrophe. We speak with Masuda Sultan and Medea Benjamin, two co-founders of Unfreeze Afghanistan, a coalition advocating for the release of funding for Afghan civilians. They recently visited Afghanistan as part of a U.S. women’s delegation and say the U.S. has a responsibility to alleviate the suffering there, which it had a major role in causing over two decades of war. “It seems that every time there is a showdown between the Taliban and the international community, it’s the Afghan people that suffer,” says Sultan. “We are now having a kind of economic warfare against the Afghan people,” adds Benjamin.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMYGOODMAN:This isDemocracy Now!I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González, as we turn to Afghanistan, where women have led protests in response to the Taliban’s order in March to shut down public high schools for girls. The Taliban have also issued a number of other new restrictions. Women have been barred from flying without a male companion. Men and women will no longer be allowed in public parks on the same day. All male government workers must grow beards or risk being fired.
This is 16-year-old Khadija from Kabul, one of the many students who was told she had to go home after she excitedly arrived for her first day of school last month.
KHADIJA:[translated] It was like a day of mourning, a very sad day. It was like losing a loved one. Everyone was crying. The girls were hugging and crying and saying goodbye. … Even if it would be very difficult, I still wanted to be a doctor. I like doctors’ white coats. But now I cannot do anything. My future is ruined.
AMYGOODMAN:And this is a schoolteacher at a protest outside Afghanistan’s Education Ministry in Kabul.
SCHOOLTEACHER:[translated] The Taliban are scared of an educated girl. When a girl is educated, a family will be educated. And when a family is educated, a nation will be educated. And finally, an educated nation will never, ever nourish the motives of terrorists.
AMYGOODMAN:The move prompted U.S. officials to cancel talks with Taliban leaders in Doha last month to address the economic catastrophe in Afghanistan, triggered in part by U.S. sanctions imposed after the Taliban regained control of Afghanistan last August.
Meanwhile, aid groups continue to demand the Biden administration and European leaders release frozen reserves from Afghanistan’s central bank, warning, without the funds, Afghanistan faces total collapse. Last month, U.N. Secretary-General Guterres warned the nation’s already dire humanitarian situation is worsening, as a U.N. donors’ conference for Afghanistan raised barely half of the $4.4 billion goal.
SECRETARY–GENERALANTÓNIOGUTERRES:Some 95% of people do not have enough to eat, and 9 million people are at risk of famine.UNICEFestimates that a million severely malnourished children are on the verge of death, without immediate action. And global food prices are skyrocketing as a result of the war in Ukraine.
AMYGOODMAN:For more, we’re joined in Dubai by Masuda Sultan, Afghan American women’s rights activist, part of the U.S.-Afghan Women’s Council, founding member of Unfreeze Afghanistan. And joining us in Washington, D.C., longtime antiwar activist Medea Benjamin, co-founder of CodePink and Unfreeze Afghanistan. They’ve both just returned from a trip to Afghanistan with a women’s delegation.
We welcome you both back toDemocracy Now!Masuda, let’s begin with you. You go to your home country, Afghanistan. Tell us what you found and what you’re calling for.
MASUDASULTAN:Well, Amy, Medea and I and a group of six other American women activists who have been working in Afghanistan for the past 20, 25 years were hoping to go for the reopening of schools. And just before our trip, we heard that, as we all heard, that girls above the age of seventh grade to 12th were stopped. And we all saw the images of girls crying and being sent away. And we had to make a decision about what we were going to do. Believe me, that day that that happened, March 23rd, I couldn’t get out of bed. I was crying, as were the girls and women of Afghanistan, as was the world. But we made a decision that we needed to go to Afghanistan precisely because we wanted to advocate for these girls. And we had been advocating for the release of the central bank assets and increased aid.
And I’m really glad we went, because, you know, what I learned on this trip is that Afghanistan needs engagement. The Afghan people need the Taliban government and the United States to cooperate. You know, if we’re going to throw a fit and decide to isolate them every time they do something which is abhorrent, we’re going to further isolate the suffering people of Afghanistan. Already as it is, 95% of people don’t have enough to eat. When you drive around Kabul, it’s sometimes not as easy to understand what’s going on, until you start talking to people. And when you talk to people, you realize that so many of them have lost the dignity of their jobs, of having work, that the neighbors and the friends that used to support them don’t have the income, either, to support them, and that many people are suffering silently in their homes. Even the aid that supposed to be getting there, the food distribution, we found that families were not getting food, even in Kabul, and that’s the capital. That’s where all the international community is. So that’s very concerning. I’m very concerned about people in the provinces, as well. The economic crisis is compounded by the sanctions, by the lack of cash. It seems that every time there’s a showdown between the Taliban and the international community, it’s the Afghan people that suffer. One Afghan woman said to me, “We got one slap by the Taliban and another slap from the international community.”
JUANGONZÁLEZ:And, Medea, could you talk about your meetings with the Taliban leaders, what you discussed with them, and also this whole issue of the central bank moneys that were seized by the U.S. and the Western powers? Clearly, this whole issue of — globalization is taking a big blow these days, because if countries have their money seized because it’s outside the country, that’s going to push the whole move for globalization further and further back.
MEDEABENJAMIN:[inaudible] having seen those horrific scenes in Ukraine, to recognize that the United States dropped over 85,000 bombs in Afghanistan over 20 years and was never held accountable for anything. And, in fact, when hopefully this war in Ukraine is over soon, the world community is going to ask Russia to pay reparations. There were no reparations paid by the United States. On the contrary, the U.S. has stolen $7 billion of Afghan funds. The Biden administration could have released that money right away and didn’t, and, in fact, has now separated out $3.5 billion as possible compensation for 9/11 families. We had Kelly Campbell from 9/11 Families for Peaceful Tomorrows on the trip with us, who made very compelling talks in Afghanistan about how that money, every single penny of it, belonged to the Afghan people. The other $3.5 billion is supposed to go back for Afghanistan. It hasn’t gone back.
And so there is a huge liquidity crisis in the country right now. We met with members of the central bank, and they told us how difficult it is to run an economy when you can’t get access to your accounts, when people can’t get access to their own accounts. We met with women at the reopening of the Afghan Women’s Chamber of Commerce, and women business leaders said to us they can’t even get the money to pay the salaries of their employees. We met a very poor woman on the street who came up to us crying, saying she can’t get her pension.
So we are now having a kind of economic warfare against the Afghan people, and that’s why it’s so important for us to demand from the Biden administration and from our members of Congress that all of that money be released and that the U.S. be much more generous in giving humanitarian aid and development aid. There was a new decree that was put out by the Taliban that says that they will stop poppy production. This is something the U.S. had tried to do for 20 years totally unsuccessfully. And they are asking the international community for help to provide farmers with alternative crops. This is a tremendous opportunity for the international community to get involved and help to reshape the Afghan economy. Conditioning aid and development assistance is the absolute wrong thing to do right now.
JUANGONZÁLEZ:And, Masuda, again, this whole issue, when you met with Taliban officials, what did they tell you?
MASUDASULTAN:Well, we also met people from the Ministry of Education who were very clearly committed to girls’ education, were saying that as soon — you know, this is the problem, is that this decision came at the last minute from the top down, from the emir himself. And the reports are that there were some people within the leadership council, a minority, that convinced him to not allow these high school girls to go to school — which doesn’t make any sense, because women in college and universities are still going and attending university. So, it’s just this particular set of young women that are being held back. And it’s unfortunate, because from our discussions with everyone that we talked to among the Taliban, they said they wanted girls to go to school, and they were waiting for the emir to decide — or, to continue. They thought that it was going to come at any day, at any moment. I can’t say that they said this, but it seemed that they were upset about it. And they said, “If the emir says at 11:00 that we can go ahead, the Education Ministry is ready at 11:01 to go ahead and reopen these schools.”
So it seems that, you know, all eyes are on this one person to make the right decision. And we hope that that comes soon enough, because these girls can’t wait. It’s very unfortunate. Lots of fathers told us that they didn’t know what to tell their daughters when their son goes off to school in the morning. And I think a lot of Afghan people are feeling very disturbed about all of this. In fact, there’s been protests. And there’s just — you know, we need pressure on the emir, it seems, to reverse this decision. But the good news is, is that within the Taliban movement itself, there seems to be quite a bit of dissent around this, including tweets and a lot of comments saying that that decision should be reversed.
JUANGONZÁLEZ:And I’m wondering, Musada — also we’re seeing all the reports of the billions of dollars in humanitarian and military aid that the West is providing to Ukraine right now, as well as the welcoming of all the refugees. But yet, here in Afghanistan, Secretary-General António Guterres has said that there’s only — so far the U.N. has only been able to raise from its donors’ conference half of its $4.4 billion goal to aid Afghanistan. And, of course, what is the status of those who left Afghanistan after the Taliban seized power? How are the Afghan refugees being treated right now?
MASUDASULTAN:Well, it’s a good point that you bring up about the aid, because, look, what happened in Afghanistan, this humanitarian catastrophe, it’s not just a normal humanitarian catastrophe. It’s one that the United States has played an active role in causing. And on the one hand, yes, we are the largest donors to Afghanistan, but on the other hand, we have completely crippled their economy, and we supported — remember, we supported a government previously, the Ghani regime, that was kleptocratic, abusive and corrupt. And we have seen — we have talked to lots of people who talked about corrupt NGOs, corrupt government officials, abuses committed by the previous officials and the army and the police. These people have really suffered as a result of our policies. And now that they’re trying to get on their feet, we literally have the entire country in a strangulation.
So, the United States bears a lot of responsibility for what has happened in Afghanistan, and we should be stepping up, as well with others around the world. Remember, it was a coalition of 40-plus countries that invaded Afghanistan, and we all have a responsibility to help that country get right. What’s happening there — you know, what’s happening in Ukraine is obviously very awful. We feel for the people of Ukraine. But we can’t forget our responsibility to the people of Afghanistan, who are now rated as the highest level of suffering in the world. A Gallup poll says that 94% of Afghans rate themselves as suffering. In fact, most people just want to leave the country, because they don’t think that the United States is interested in fixing this. Everyone we talked to said, “The United States and the Afghan authorities, we need them to cooperate. And we need groups like you, civil society people, normal Americans, to come and engage.” If we wash our hands of this country and isolate it again, we’re just going to be repeating the mistakes of the 1990s, and we all know how that ended.
AMYGOODMAN:Medea Benjamin, we just have 10 seconds, but you’ve heard the repeated description of Vladimir Putin as a war criminal by President Biden. Your thoughts as you come out of Afghanistan in the context of the war in Ukraine?
MEDEABENJAMIN:Unfortunately, the U.S. would not allow the International Criminal Court to even investigate U.S. potential war crimes in Afghanistan, and there were many of them. And the U.S. is not even a party to the International Criminal Court. So it would be nice to have a judgment against those who took us into this War in Afghanistan.
AMYGOODMAN:Medea Benjamin, Masuda Sultan, thank you so much.
Much has been said and written about media bias and double standards in the West’s response to the Russia-Ukraine war, when compared with other wars and military conflicts across the world, especially in the Middle East and the Global South. Less obvious is how such hypocrisy is a reflection of a much larger phenomenon which governs the West’s relationship to war and conflict zones.
On March 19, Iraq commemorated the 19th anniversary of the US invasion which killed, according to modest estimates, over a million Iraqis. The consequences of that war were equally devastating as it destabilized the entire Middle East region, leading to various civil and proxy wars. The Arab world is reeling under that horrific experience to this day.
Also, on March 19, the eleventh anniversary of the NATO war on Libya was commemorated and followed, five days later, by the 23rd anniversary of the NATO war on Yugoslavia. Like every NATO-led war since the inception of the alliance in 1949, these wars resulted in widespread devastation and tragic death tolls.
None of these wars, starting with the NATO intervention in the Korean Peninsula in 1950, have stabilized any of the warring regions. Iraq is still as vulnerable to terrorism and outside military interventions and, in many ways, remains an occupied country. Libya is divided among various warring camps, and a return to civil war remains a real possibility.
Yet, enthusiasm for war remains high, as if over seventy years of failed military interventions have not taught us any meaningful lessons. Daily, news headlines tell us that the US, the UK, Canada, Germany, Spain or some other western power have decided to ship a new kind of ‘lethal weapons’ to Ukraine. Billions of dollars have already been allocated by Western countries to contribute to the war in Ukraine.
In contrast, very little has been done to offer platforms for diplomatic, non-violent solutions. A handful of countries in the Middle East, Africa and Asia have offered mediation or insisted on a diplomatic solution to the war, arguing, as China’s foreign ministry reiterated on March 18, that “all sides need to jointly support Russia and Ukraine in having dialogue and negotiation that will produce results and lead to peace”.
Though the violation of the sovereignty of any country is illegal under international law, and is a stark violation of the United Nations Charter, this does not mean that the only solution to violence is counter-violence. This cannot be truer in the case of Russia and Ukraine, as a state of civil war has existed in Eastern Ukraine for eight years, harvesting thousands of lives and depriving whole communities from any sense of peace or security. NATO’s weapons cannot possibly address the root causes of this communal struggle. On the contrary, they can only fuel it further.
If more weapons were the answer, the conflict would have been resolved years ago. According to the BBC, the US has already allocated $2.7bn to Ukraine over the last eight years, long before the current war. This massive arsenal included “anti-tank and anti-armor weapons … US-made sniper (rifles), ammunition and accessories”.
The speed with which additional military aid has poured into Ukraine following the Russian military operations on February 24 is unprecedented in modern history. This raises not only political or legal questions, but moral questions as well – the eagerness to fund war and the lack of enthusiasm to help countries rebuild.
After 21 years of US war and invasion of Afghanistan, resulting in a humanitarian and refugee crisis, Kabul is now largely left on its own. Last September, the UN refugee agency warned that “a major humanitarian crisis is looming in Afghanistan”, yet nothing has been done to address this ‘looming’ crisis, which has greatly worsened since then.
Afghani refugees are rarely welcomed in Europe. The same is true for refugees coming from Iraq, Syria, Libya, Mali and other conflicts that directly or indirectly involved NATO. This hypocrisy is accentuated when we consider international initiatives that aim to support war refugees, or rebuild the economies of war-torn nations.
Compare the lack of enthusiasm in supporting war-torn nations with the West’s unparalleled euphoria in providing weapons to Ukraine. Sadly, it will not be long before the millions of Ukrainian refugees who have left their country in recent weeks become a burden on Europe, thus subjected to the same kind of mainstream criticism and far-right attacks.
While it is true that the West’s attitude towards Ukraine is different from its attitude towards victims of western interventions, one has to be careful before supposing that the ‘privileged’ Ukrainains will ultimately be better off than the victims of war throughout the Middle East. As the war drags on, Ukraine will continue to suffer, either the direct impact of the war or the collective trauma that will surely follow. The amassing of NATO weapons in Ukraine, as was the case of Libya, will likely backfire. In Libya, NATO’s weapons fueled the country’s decade long civil war.
Ukraine needs peace and security, not perpetual war that is designed to serve the strategic interests of certain countries or military alliances. Though military invasions must be wholly rejected, whether in Iraq or Ukraine, turning Ukraine into another convenient zone of perpetual geopolitical struggle between NATO and Russia is not the answer.
The Biden administration’s decision to admit 100,000 Ukrainian refugees, announced last week in the wake of the president’s European tour, is a huge step in the rebuilding of the U.S.’s once-vaunted refugee program after years in which the Trump administration all but neutralized it. However, the program must expand further if the U.S. plans to attempt to accommodate the steep increase in refugees that the coming year will likely bring.
At the urging of Stephen Miller, Trump’s mastermind of all things nasty when it came to making life miserable for immigrants, Donald Trump drastically reduced the numbers of refugees admitted yearly. By the time he signed off on his final presidential finding on the issue in the fall of 2020, he had set a refugee cap of 15,000 per year. It was a shockingly low number, barely one-sixth of the number admitted in Barack Obama’s final year in office, and a mere fraction of the 231,000 admitted in 1980; and — since refugee resettlement agencies receive much of their funding based on the numbers they are expected to resettle — it led to an evisceration of the U.S.’s resettlement programs.
The horrendous notion of massively constricting the numbers admitted was made even worse by a series of travel bans, largely targeting Muslim-majority countries, that made it nearly impossible for refugees from Yemen, Syria, Sudan, and several other countries experiencing widespread violence to enter the United States. In other words, the U.S. actively shut out refugees from places where the need was greatest.
Trump was determined to batten down the hatches against what he — and the far right in Europe — viewed as a tsunami of refuge seekers: In 2015-16, the period immediately before Trump’s election, more than 5 million asylum seekers and refugees from conflicts in the Middle East and in Africa headed to Europe to try to escape bloodshed and economic collapse. Trump slammed German Chancellor Angela Merkel for making a “very catastrophic mistake” in liberalizing Germany’s asylum policies, and said that more migrants were going to Europe as a result. And Trump determined that he wouldn’t allow the U.S. to go down the same road.
Biden came into office promising to increase the refugee cap to 125,000. He then ran into a buzzsaw of criticism when, already attacked from the right for being “weak” on immigration because of the surging number of asylum seekers crossing the southern border, he appeared to walk back this pledge in early 2021. Faced with a revolt from within Democratic ranks at this campaign promise betrayal, he reversed course again, initially raising the cap to 62,500, and then, in fall 2021, finally increasing it again, to the long-promised 125,000.
Yet, with the Afghanistan and now Ukraine crises upending the lives of millions, even that aspirational number may prove inadequate to meet the vast refugee resettlement challenges of the moment.
After the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan and the country’s rapid collapse back into brutal Taliban rule, the U.S. airlifted more than 130,000 people out of Afghanistan; by the late autumn, officials were estimating that about 50,000 had already arrived, or would soon do so, in the United States. Now, barely seven months later, Russia’s assault on Ukraine has unleashed the largest refugee crisis in Europe since World War II, with nearly 4 million refugees having crossed over to other countries, and millions more internally displaced in Ukraine in barely a month of fighting.
That the U.S. is opening its doors to large numbers of refugees, some of whom will be granted permanent residency under the refugee resettlement program, many of whom will be given temporary status under the “humanitarian parole” program once they arrive, is a huge step in the right direction for U.S. refugee policy.
But, for many aid agency workers, the unthawing of the refugee resettlement program is coming at far too slow a pace. Most Afghans were admitted under the humanitarian parole program rather than the refugee resettlement program, meaning that they aren’t on a pathway to permanent residency, and it looks like most Ukrainians will be admitted this way as well. For while the refugee cap was, indeed, raised to 125,000, that’s more a long-term goal than a reflection of on-the-ground realities. Indeed, so far this year, according to State Department data, a mere sliver of that total number, only about 8,000 refugees, has actually been admitted. The processing of refugees continues to be bogged down by staffing shortages and a denuded infrastructure — the legacy of Trump’s four years of unrelenting hostility to refugee resettlement.
The Ukrainian catastrophe, coming so fast on the heels of Afghanistan’s fall to the Taliban, has shown just how vital — and also how fragile — refugee resettlement infrastructure is. U.S. efforts to isolate the Taliban, through freezing Afghanistan’s central bank assets, as Biden has done, have had ripple effects on civilians, further plunging the state into economic crisis and further fueling the exodus of desperate, hungry people.
In an era of massive population upheavals, due to wars, climate change, disease and the rise of brutal narco-states in parts of the world, wealthy democracies have a particular obligation to shoulder their share of the weight in resettling those displaced. President Biden is on the right track, both in raising the refugee cap and in announcing that large number of Ukrainians will be eligible for entry into the U.S. Now, he needs to find ways to increase the numbers admitted via the traditional refugee resettlement program route, and to rapidly channel funding into programs that have too often in recent years been forced to make destructive cuts.
An international aid group warned Wednesday that Afghanistan is on the brink of complete collapse as the Biden administration and European governmentsrefuse to releasethe war-torn nation’s central bank reserves, depriving the economy of critical funds as millions face poverty and starvation.
In a statement ahead of aninternational donor conferencefor Afghanistan, the International Rescue Committee (IRC)saidthe country “is now the world’s largest-ever humanitarian appeal, requiring a staggering US$4.47 billion in humanitarian aid — quadruple the needs at the start of 2021 and more than is required for either Syria or Yemen.”
Since the Taliban retook power last August following two decades of U.S.-led warfare, IRC noted, “the speed of Afghanistan’s economic collapse has been unprecedented.” Following the withdrawal of American troops, the Biden administrationfrozebillions of dollars in Afghan central bank assets held in the U.S. despite warnings that the move would push the country closer to full-scale economic ruin.
Last month, U.S. President Joe Bidenissued an executive orderaiming to permanently seize Afghanistan’s assets and split them between the families of 9/11 victims and an ill-defined “trust fund” for Afghans. Blocked from accessing its own reserves, Kabul hasstruggled to affordeven the import taxes on containers of badly needed food.
Moreover, the Biden administration has left in place crippling economic sanctions that could kill more civilians than 20 years of war,according toone analyst.
European governments and international institutions also took punitive steps following the Taliban’s return to power, suspending financing for projects in Afghanistan and leaving humanitarian groups on the groundwithout the resourcesneeded to help the growing number of sick and malnourished Afghans.
“Afghans that could support themselves and their families six months ago are now entirely dependent on aid,” IRC said Wednesday. “With each week that goes by, more Afghans are forced to resort to the unimaginable to survive: since August, the number of Afghans resorting to negative coping capacities has risen sixfold, such as selling young daughters into marriage, pulling children out of school to work, selling organs, skipping meals, or taking on high levels of debt.”
TheNew York TimesreportedTuesday that Afghans desperate for cash to feed their families are turning to “backbreaking work” in the notoriously dangerous mines of northern Afghanistan. Some toiling in the mines are as young as 10 years old, according to the newspaper.
UNICEF recentlywarnedthat more than a million Afghan children will need treatment for severe acute malnutrition this year and 13 million kids in total will need humanitarian assistance.
David Miliband, IRC’s president and CEO, said Wednesday that the actions of the international community have pushed Afghanistan toward “total collapse.”
“If the Afghan economy is not resuscitated, the severity of the current humanitarian crisis will only deepen, with dire consequences for life and limb of ordinary Afghans,” said Miliband. “Further economic distress will only mean greater displacement, greater insecurity, and greater misery.”
Miliband urged countries and humanitarian groups participating in Thursday’s donor conference to ramp up aid to Afghanistan, but stressed that such charity work “only addresses the symptoms rather than the drivers of a failing economy.”
“Afghanistan urgently requires a roadmap for international engagement to address the economic crisis, including benchmarks for the release of frozen Afghan assets to the central bank,” Miliband argued. “In the immediate term, this will require donors and financial institutions to help rebuild the capacity of the central bank to operate independently, adhere to international banking standards, and manage the Afghan economy.”
“The urgent work to stave off famine and preventable deaths in the coming weeks and months should not crowd out the important work to halt the trajectory of this crisis and stabilize the economy,” he continued. “Until these measures are taken, Afghan civilians will continue to pay for the transgressions of others with their own lives and suffering.”
Welthungerhilfe, a Germany-based humanitarian nonprofit,voiced similar fearson Tuesday, pointing out that 95% of the Afghan population “no longer has adequate nutrition” — a crisis exacerbated by Russia’s war on Ukraine, which haspushed up commodity pricesand intensified supply chain disruptions.
“Afghanistan is in free fall,” said Thomas ten Boer, Welthungerhilfe’s director in Kabul. “The sanctions are crushing the economy and preventing money from entering the country. Agricultural production will continue to plummet because farmers cannot purchase seeds or fertilizer due to drastic price hikes.”
“We are risking the future of an entire generation that now lacks both adequate nutrition and a proper education,” he added.
Following 20 long years (2011-2021) of brutal war on Afghanistan by the U.S.-led military coalition, which ended up delivering the country to the Taliban in August 2021, 23 million Afghans now face a devastating humanitarian crisis: severe and acute hunger, economic bankruptcy, healthcare system collapse and unbearable family indebtedness.
People in Afghanistan are today facing a food insecurity and malnutrition crisis of “unparalleled proportions,” Ramiz Alakbarov, deputy special representative for the U.N. secretary general, reported on March 15.
Seven months after the fall of Kabul, shelters in the U.S. caring for children evacuated without their parents are experiencing unprecedented violence while workers at the facilities have struggled to respond to the young Afghans’ trauma.
Some children have run away, punched employees and stopped eating. Others have tried to kill themselves. At one shelter, ProPublica has learned, some children reported being hurt by employees and sexually abused by other minors.
At least three shelters in Michigan and Illinois have shut down or paused operations after taking in large groups of Afghan children, prompting federal officials to transfer them from one facility to another, further upending their lives.
“This is not acceptable,” said Naheed Samadi Bahram, U.S. country director for the nonprofit Women for Afghan Women, which provides mentors to children in custody in New York. These children “left their homes with a dream to be stable, to be happy, to be safe. If we cannot offer that here in the U.S. that is a big failure.”
ProPublicareported in October on serious problems at a Chicago shelter that took in dozens of young Afghans. Since then, we’ve found that the troubles in the U.S. shelter system are more widespread.
This account is based on law enforcement records, internal documents and interviews with nearly two dozen people who have worked with or have talked with the children in facilities across the country, including shelter administrators and employees as well as interpreters, attorneys and volunteers.
Advocates for the children acknowledge that the Office of Refugee Resettlement — the federal agency responsible for overseeing the nation’s shelters for unaccompanied immigrant minors — is navigating an exceptional challenge. The haphazard evacuation of tens of thousands of people from Afghanistan last year as U.S. troops pulled out of the country left little time to prepare ORR facilities, which are accustomed to housing Central American children and teens. The COVID-19 pandemic created additional complications.
In all, some 1,400 unaccompanied Afghan minors were brought to the U.S. last year and placed in ORR custody. Of those, more than 1,200 have gone to live with sponsors, typically relatives or family friends.
Nearly all the remaining 190 are teenage boys with nobody here who can take them in. As of March 8, more than 80 Afghan children had been in ORR custody for at least five months, according to government data analyzed by the National Center for Youth Law. In a system that normally houses children for about a month, the young Afghans have been waiting in what seems like never-ending detention.
It’s unclear how or when children will be reunited with their families. The State Department is working to obtain travel documents for parents who remain in Afghanistan, a spokesperson said, but coordinating departures from Taliban-ruled Kabul has proven challenging.
The ORR said it has placed 56 of the 190 children in its custody into long-term or transitional foster care as of this week and is recruiting more families to take them in.
An ORR official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the agency is doing its best to support the Afghan children by providing interpreters, mental health services, additional staffing and, in recent months, Afghan American mentors. But those efforts won’t “change the reality for a child that their parent is hiding from the Taliban or that their family has died or that they are grappling with some really terrible things that nobody should have to grapple with.”
“I do struggle to know what else we could be doing that we’ve already not been trying to do.”
And the ORR may soon face another challenge. With the Biden administration’s announcement Thursday that the U.S. will accept 100,000 Ukrainians fleeing war, people who work in the system are bracing for the children who may arrive without their parents.
On a cold and cloudy evening in early January, 19 boys were shuttled in vans to a shelter run by the nonprofit Samaritas in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Employees at the shelter had heard that they might receive Afghan children but thought they’d have two or three weeks to prepare for their arrival.
Instead, they had 24 hours’ notice, according to one worker. (The ORR says it gave the shelter two weeks’ notice.) A federal emergency intake site that housed dozens of Afghan children almost 85 miles away in Albion, Michigan, had abruptly shut down, scattering children to facilities across the country, including Samaritas.
The shelter was not ready.
“Everything from the food to the reading material [to the] grievance procedures and the rules — everything that we had was set up for Central American kids,” one Samaritas employee said. “And now we were really screwed.”
On a given day, some 10,000 or so children and teens are in ORR custody around the country, the vast majority of them from Central America. Facilities that receive them tend to have employees who know their language and culture. Workers often speak Spanish or are Latin American immigrants or children of immigrants. They understand what motivates Central American teens to immigrate each year: pursuing a better education, fleeing gang violence and earning dollars to support families.
The children, too, often know what to expect because they’ve heard stories from friends and relatives who immigrated before them. They know it’ll be about 30 days in ORR custody before they’re sent to live with a sponsor.
“The Afghan kids were a completely different story,” said a former worker at a Pittsburgh shelter run by the nonprofit Holy Family Institute. “I felt so sorry for them. They’ve been there three, four months, and they still did not know if they would ever see their families again.”
The pivot to housing Afghan children left shelters flat-footed. Many needed prayer rugs, halal meat and connections to local Muslims who could lead Friday prayers. Even with interpreters who spoke Pashto or Dari, communication between children and employees was difficult, leading to misunderstandings and mistrust.
In the hours before the Afghan children arrived in Grand Rapids, the Samaritas worker said staff members were scrambling: “OK, like, what language do they speak? … It was a culture shock for them. It was a culture shock for us.”
There were many “unexpected complications,” said Samaritas Chief Operations Officer Kevin Van Den Bosch, but “we looked at the challenge, and said, ‘If not us, who is going to do it?’”
Employees at several shelters described the trauma among the youths as more severe than anything they’d seen. Children are desperate to call home to check on their parents and other relatives, some of whom worked for the U.S. government or for contractors and are now potential targets for the Taliban.
Some feel guilty for being in the U.S. while their families fear for their lives in Afghanistan.
After the Afghan children arrived at Samaritas, Grand Rapids police responded nearly every other day to calls for incidents like missing persons, suicide threats, fights and assaults. The police reports were unavailable, but internal shelter records document many of those incidents.
One boy put a rope around his neck, “acting like he wanted to hang himself.” Another day, a boy tried to suffocate another child with a plastic bag. A few days later, a worker found a boy scratching his forearm. He told her that “when his body is in pain, it prevents his head from thinking about his problems.”
Meanwhile, Michigan’s Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the state’s Children’s Protective Services, is investigating allegations related to Samaritas, though it’s not clear what the allegations involve. A department spokesperson, Bob Wheaton, said the agency was prohibited by law from disclosing details.
Samaritas officials said that, while the nonprofit could not provide information about the allegations, the agency follows robust safety protocols to protect the youth in its care. That includes background checks, cameras at the facility and safety plans for children at risk of self-harm. “We take every, every allegation, or everything that a youth says seriously,” Van Den Bosch said, “and everything gets reported.”
Advocates said the struggles of some of the Afghan children should have been anticipated.
“Even children who have no prior traumatic experiences would begin to show signs of distress at this point, being in shelter care for this long,” said Saman Hamidi-Azar, who visits children in ORR facilities as a volunteer with Afghan Refugee Relief, a community organization in California. “There is nowhere to pinpoint blame except for the manner in which Afghanistan is evacuated: way too fast. No one was prepared on the ground here. No one could have expected what happened.”
In Chicago, ProPublica reported last fall on how the challenges involving Afghan children at a shelter operated by Heartland Human Care Services were exacerbated by the lack of on-site interpreters.
But in the months that followed, police were called repeatedly to the facility. In January, officers arrested a 16-year-old boy accused of kicking and punching two workers. According to the police report, the boy said he was upset about being separated from his friends.
In a statement, Heartland said it’s not equipped to provide the mental health support some Afghan children need. “Heartland is not alone in our experience of how the severe lack of access to mental health resources dramatically impacted unaccompanied Afghan youth who arrived in this country last fall,” an official wrote.
The official said it stopped taking in children “after the challenging past few months” to support front-line staff through team-building and training. Heartland recently resumed operations, though at a reduced capacity.
Starr Commonwealth, the emergency intake site in Albion, seemed to get off to a better start. It offered a welcoming setting with residential cottages on a lush green campus when Afghan children arrived last fall. Unlike Heartland, it had Dari and Pashto interpreters on site from the outset.
But attorneys who visited children at Starr raised red flags early on. The site was too restrictive, they said, and children complained about a lack of physical activity and phones to call their families.
What’s more, because of its status as a federal emergency intake site, Starr wasn’t licensed by the state. Immigration advocates have long criticized the government’s use of these emergency facilities because they operate without independent state oversight.
The federal government had begun leasing the campus from a nonprofit with the same name last spring in response to large numbers of Central American children crossing the border. Starr later shifted focus to housing Afghan children.
As the children remained long past the short stays Starr was designed to accommodate, the local sheriff’s office started fielding calls about fights, runaways and suicidal behavior. A volunteer who often visited the facility — and asked not to be identified to avoid the risk of losing access to children in ORR custody — said children would tell her they “were crying all night long” and ask for prayers to help with depression.
She told her husband the shelter reminded her of a prison.
Before Starr shut down in early January, the sheriff’s office in Calhoun County received referrals for at least five child welfare allegations in the final three weeks, records show. In one case, a 16-year-old said two workers shoved and yelled at him. When interviewed by a deputy, one of the workers acknowledged yelling out of frustration but said he “does not put his hands” on the children.
The other worker was separately suspended after being accused of kicking a boy who was praying, according to a report. Neither led to charges. In the case in which the 16-year-old said he was shoved, the Calhoun County prosecutor’s office determined an assault did not take place. In the second, the child who said that he was kicked could not be located because he had been transferred elsewhere, Prosecuting Attorney David Gilbert said.
There were other troubles. Authorities responded to three allegations of sexual abuse or inappropriate behavior between children, including one from an 8-year-old boy who told a counselor that a 13-year-old boy came into his room at night and touched him. “He is scared and does not feel safe,” according to a sheriff’s department report. But by the time the prosecutors got this case, too, the children were no longer at Starr and could not be located, Gilbert said.
It’s unclear who employed the workers, as Starr was mostly staffed by PAE Applied Technologies, a federal contractor. A company representative declined to comment. Other workers came from a variety of federal agencies that loaned their services to the ORR.
A spokesperson for Starr said the nonprofit “did share a number of concerns” with both ORR and PAE. But Starr was “purely serving as a landlord,” she added, and “the government, not Starr, is solely responsible for programming and caring for children through its ORR program.”
Wheaton, from the state’s Department of Health and Human Services, said the agency had no jurisdiction over Starr but forwarded allegations to local law enforcement and federal authorities.
The ORR official said that the agency has a “zero-tolerance policy for abuse of any kind” and that employees accused of abuse are immediately terminated or put on administrative leave. Facilities also send allegations to local law enforcement, child protective services, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ inspector general and the FBI.
At Starr and shelters around the country, workers said that they were overwhelmed. Some expressed frustration, calling the youth “spoiled” for asking for more phone time and Afghan food — which, over time, they received. Other employees suspected their colleagues were afraid of the children. One volunteer called the situation inside a shelter a “pressure cooker.”
Workers and others at several facilities said they heard children say they’d been told that if they misbehaved, they’d be sent back to Afghanistan.
ORR officials said any threats against children are unacceptable, and employees accused of maltreatment are placed on leave until all the details of what happened are understood.
Staffing shortages exacerbated tensions. In recent weeks, Samaritas administrators offered workers a $500 bonus if they picked up an extra shift, according to emails obtained by ProPublica.
“The depth and breadth of the need, and the sudden nature of it … put everybody in a really tough spot,” Sam Beals, Samaritas’ chief executive, said. “When I think of what these kids have gone through … it’s shocking they don’t act out more.”
Last week, Samaritas paused operations at the Grand Rapids shelter to hire and train staff.
The decision was made by the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services, which holds Samaritas’ grant with the ORR, according to federal officials. Lutheran Immigration did not respond to requests for comment.
Less than three months after they arrived at Samaritas, the Afghan children were on the move again, transferred to new facilities. Employees made it a point to prepare the children by taking them on virtual or physical tours when possible. The last child left the Samaritas shelter last weekend.
Melissa Adamson, an attorney with the National Center for Youth Law who is authorized to interview children in U.S. immigration custody, said the repeated transfers of the Afghan youth “further destabilizes their already fragile sense of security.”
Last fall, the ORR began offering special training for staff at shelters serving Afghan children. The agency also began allowing volunteer mentors from the Afghan American community to visit and provide emotional support to children, federal officials said.
In January, the ORR began sending Muslim and Afghan American mental health specialists to shelters through a program with the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants.
The changes made a difference, said Hamidi-Azar — whose organization is part of a coalition of Afghan American community groups, advocates and others that mobilized last fall to assist evacuees in the U.S. “You have to give credit where it’s due,” she said. “From government agencies to community activists, we have all been trying to find a way to make the situation better.”
After visiting children at one shelter in California, one Afghan American volunteer realized she could do more: She became a foster mom and welcomed two small boys — cousins — to her home.
The woman, who asked not to be identified to protect the children’s privacy, took time off work to bond with the boys and enroll them in the neighborhood school.
“They have adjusted well and are so happy to be in a home environment,” she said. “Being able to experience many firsts has been pretty special” — including a trip to the beach and a ride on a carousel.
Theirs is the kind of story advocates around the country want for Afghan children languishing in ORR custody. But the foster care system is backlogged, and finding homes for teenage boys is especially difficult. Foster parents often prefer and are licensed to care for younger children.
The ORR has partnered with organizations like the Muslim Foster Care Association to recruit more foster families. Approximately 80 Afghan families are awaiting licensing, a process that varies by state.
The foster mom in California thinks often about all the children still waiting for what’s next.
“As happy as I was that these boys were placed [with me], there were kids at the shelter that were devastated,” she said. “I know that one kid was crying: ‘Why? Why didn’t a family want me? What did I do?’”
If you or someone you know needs help, here are a few resources:
Images of burnt flesh from napalm bombs, wounded and dead soldiers, scenes of U.S. soldiers burning the simple huts of Vietnamese villages, eventually turned the public against the war in Vietnam and produced the dreaded affliction, from the ruling class point of view, known as the “Vietnam syndrome.” This collective Post Traumatic Stress Disorder made it impossible for the public to support any foreign military involvement for years.
It took the rulers almost three decades to finally cure the public of this affliction. But the rulers were careful.
The brutal reality of what the U.S. was doing in Afghanistan and Iraq was whitewashed. That is why the images now being brought to the public by the corporate media are so shocking. It has been more than two generations since the U.S. public was exposed to the horrific images of war.
In the 1960s the rulers inadvertently allowed themselves to be undermined by the new television technology that brought the awful reality of imperialist war into the homes of the public. Now, the ruling class operating through its corporate media propaganda arms has been effectively using Ukraine war propaganda, not to increase Anti-war sentiment but to stimulate support for more war!
Incredibly also, the propagandists are pushing a line that essentially says that in the name of “freedom” and supporting Ukraine, the U.S. public should shoulder the sacrifice of higher fuel and food prices. This is on top of the inflation that workers and consumers were already being subjected to coming out of the capitalist covid scandal that devastated millions of workers and the lower stratums of the petit bourgeoisie.
But the war, and now the unfair shouldering of all of the costs of the capitalist crisis of 2008 – 2009, and the impact of covid by the working classes in the U.S., amounts to a capitalist tax. It is levied by the oligarchy on workers to subsidize the defense of the interests of big capital and the conditions that have produced obscene profits, even in the midst of the covid crisis and now, the Ukraine war.
These policies are criminal. While the U.S. continues to pretend that it champions human rights around the world, the failure of the state to protect the fundamental human rights of the citizens and residents in the U.S. is obvious to all, but spoken about by the few, except the Chinese government.
For those who might think that the Chinese criticism of the U.S. is only being driven by politics, and it might be, just a cursory, objective examination of the U.S. state policies over just the last few years reveals a shocking record of systematic human rights abuses that promise to become even more acute as a consequence of the manufactured U.S./NATO war in Ukraine.
The Ongoing Human Rights Crisis
The U.S. working class, and Black working class in particular, never recovered from the economic crisis of 2008 before it was once again ravaged in 2020 with the global capitalist crisis exacerbated by covid. On the heels of those two shocks, today millions of workers are experiencing a permanent state of precarity with evictions, the continued loss of medical coverage, unaffordable housing and food costs, and a capitalist-initiated inflation. The rulers are operating under the belief that with the daily bombardment of war images, U.S. workers and the poor will embrace rising costs of gas and even more increases in the cost of food.
Doesn’t the state have any responsibility to ensure that the economic human rights of the people are fulfilled? No, because liberal human rights practice separates fundamental human rights – such as the right to health, food, housing, education, a means to subsist at an acceptable level of material culture, leisure, and life-long social security – from democratic discourse on what constitutes the human rights responsibility of the state and the interests it must uphold in order to be legitimate.
The non-recognition of the indivisibility of human rights that values economic human rights to an equal level as civil and political rights, exposed the moral and political contradictions of the liberal human rights framework. The massive economic displacements with hunger, unemployment, and unnecessary deaths among the population in the United States, with a disproportionate rate of sickness and hospitalization among non-white workers and the poor in the U.S., were never condemned as violations of human rights.
War and Economic Deprivation the Systemic Contradictions of the Western colonial/capitalist Project
The war being waged against global humanity by the U.S./EU/NATO Axis of Domination is a hybrid war that utilizes all the tools it has at its disposal – sanctions, mass incarceration, coups, drugs, disinformation, culture, subversion, murder, and direct military engagement to further white power. The Eurocentrism and “White Lives Matters More Movement” represented by the coverage of the war in Ukraine stripped away any pretense to the supposed liberal commitment to global humanity. The white-washing of the danger of the ultra-right and neo-Nazi elements in the Ukrainian military and state and the white ethno-nationalism that the conflict generated across the Western world demonstrated, once again, how “racialism” and the commitment to the fiction of white supremacy continues to trump class and class struggle and the ability to build a multi-national, class based anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist opposition in the North.
It is primarily workers from Russia, the Donbas and Ukraine who are dying. But as in the run-up to the first imperialist war in Europe, known as World War One, workers with the encouragement of their national bourgeoisie, are lining up behind their rulers to support the capitalist redivision taking place, a redivision that can only be completed by war as long as capitalism and capitalist competition continues. Yet, instead of “progressives and radicals” joining forces to resist the mobilization to war, they are finding creative ways to align themselves with the interests of their ruling classes in support of the colonial/capitalist project.
In the meantime, the people of Afghanistan are starving, with thousands of babies now dying of malnutrition because the U.S. stole their nation’s assets. Estimates suggest that unless reversed, more people there will die from U.S./EU imposed sanctions than died during the twenty year long war. And the impact of the war in Ukraine with the loss of wheat exports from Ukraine and Russia resulting not only in rising food prices globally but in some places like East Africa, resulting in death from famine.
In the U.S. where we witness the most abysmal record of covid failure on the planet, the virus will continue to ravage the population, with a disproportionate number who get sick and die being the poorest and those furthest from whiteness.
The lackeys of capital playing the role of democratic representatives claim that there is no money to bring a modicum of relief to workers represented in the mildly reformist package known as Build Back Better. Yet, the Brown University Costs of War Project estimates that the wars waged by the United States in this century have cost $8 trillion and counting, with another $8 trillion that will be spent over the next ten years on the military budget if costs remain constant from the $778 billion just allocated.
No rational human being desires war and conflict. The horrors of war that the public are finally being exposed to because it was brought to Europe again, the most violent continent on the planet, should call into question all of the brutal and unjustified wars that the U.S. and its flunky allies waged throughout the global South over the last seventy years. Unfortunately, because of the hierarchy of the value of human beings, the images of war in Ukraine are not translating into a rejection of war, but instead a rejection of war in Europe and on white Europeans.
This means that the wars will continue and we must fight, often alone, because as Bob Marley said in his song “War”:
Until the philosophy which hold one race superior
And another
Inferior
Is finally
And permanently
Discredited
And abandoned
Everywhere is war
Me say war
Priti Patel has, shockingly, approved Julian Assange's extradition to the US. 
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