The Sunday Times February 6, 2022 17
This is the policy mix that betrays
precisely the people whom the West
spent 20 years promising to help — and
who as recently as August were told that
military withdrawal would not be
followed by economic and political
withdrawal. That is how you end up in a
situation where the World Food
Programme needs to feed more than
20 million people.
The excuse is that policymakers do
not want to support the Taliban. There is
widespread international resistance,
including from Russia and China, to
formal diplomatic recognition.
But salary payments to nurses,
teachers and water engineers are there
to support people, not governments:
$1.2 billion of aid is sitting in the World
Bank trust fund and could be used for
this purpose. It would provide support
for families in desperate straits, and
Britain should be leading the charge to
get it paid.
But for salaries to be cashable, and for
businesses to be able to function, there
needs to be capital to underpin the
banking system. The freeze on Afghan
international financial assets, including
the assets of Afghan citizens and
companies, imposed last summer, has
left this import-dependent economy
unable to function.Most of these assets — about $7 billion
— are in the US, and are tied up in
lawsuits arising from the 9/11 attacks. But
some of these assets, estimated at about
$2 billion, are in the UK, other European
countries and Switzerland. They need to
be released.
Then there are sanctions. They have
been imposed on individual Taliban
leaders (more than 100 of them) by
individual states and the UN security
council since 9/11. There are now
welcome exemptions for humanitarian
purposes, but much of the private sector
is paralysed.
Traders fear that imports of fuel or
machine parts or agricultural produce
will be caught. And even the printing of
Afghani bank notes (in Poland) is
apparently not exempt, so cash to the
tune of $8 billion is stuck outside the
country. The result is that the cash
economy (80 per cent of people do not
have bank accounts) is stifled.
It is one thing to say that Afghanistan
needs economic adjustment at the end
of a war. It certainly does. It is a different
matter to punish innocent civilians for
the failure of the western war strategy.
Yet that is the consequence of the
current policy posture.
The shock therapy is misdirected.
Where a planned and phased shift in
international support could be
defended, and could make demands of
the government, there has instead been
a guillotine, cutting off the supply lines
for those in need. It is indefensible.
In its place, the World Bank and IMF
should be directed to offer urgent
technical support to the financial
authorities in the country, and to
co-operate with the regional powers
with an interest in stability in
Afghanistan to sustain economic
functioning. It will not be pretty, and
may not be palatable, but the current
approach is far, far worse.
If the policy was intended to collapse
the Afghan state, it could hardly be
better designed. But such a collapse
should be a terrifying prospect not just
for Afghans but for the rest of us.
It is in no one’s interest (except,
conceivably, extremist groups such as
Isis). And the idea that mass migration
out of the country would stop at the
borders of Iran or Pakistan is a delusion.
Of course people would want to come to
Europe, including the UK.
An IRC staff member in Afghanistan
wrote to me: “What doesn’t make any
sense to me or any Afghan woman inside
of Afghanistan, is that in the name of
‘protecting women’s rights’ we are
ensuring that they starve to death. As
well as the fact that with the men having
no jobs, gender-based violence increases
everywhere.”
Current policy is not serving Fatima,
or millions like her. It has created a
catastrophe of choice. There needs to be
a change of approach that is
comprehensive and fast.
David Miliband is a former foreign
secretary and president and chief
executive of the International Rescue
Committeestudying political science and law at
Kabul University but is now one of the
secret English teachers. She was in a
university classroom in November, 2020,
when gunmen stormed the campus,
killing 32 people, including two of her
classmates. The Taliban denied res-
ponsibility for the attack, which was
claimed by Isis. But Sahra sees little
difference.
“When they took over it was the worst
day of my life,” she said. “I locked myself
in my room, crying. Whenever I saw their
white flag I felt traumatised.” The mes-
sage from Parasto inviting her to be a
teacher has given her a new lease of life.
In one positive sign, the Taliban, des-
perately trying to win international legiti-
macy, announced last week that universi-
ties would reopen for male and female
students. “Even if my university does
reopen for girls I don’t know if I can go
back,” Sahra said. “Whenever I pass, I see
Taliban at the gate. These are the people
who were attacking us.”
Among women who felt duty-bound to
stay in Afghanistan as most of her friends
fled was Najmussama Shefajo, one of the
country’s top gynaecologists. She began
her career secretly delivering babies in
the 1990s under the last Taliban regime.
Now she runs a maternity hospital.
“Oh, you haven’t gone!” patients
exclaimed as she went on her rounds one
day recently. Among those under her
care was a pregnant woman who has suf-
fered three miscarriages and needs
blood-thinning injections, which she
says she cannot afford; and another
woman who was desperate to get preg-
nant so that her husband would not take
another wife.
“I think I am crazy staying but I love my
country and my job and think people
need me more than ever, especially the
poor women,” Shefajo says. She added: “I
have a smile on my face but there is fear in
my heart.”
The two remaining female presenters
at Afghanistan’s most popular television
channel, Tolo TV, know what she means.
“We try to be hopeful but we come to
work every day with fear,” Khatera, 25,
said. “We think tomorrow or the day after
they will say we can’t come [to work] any
more.”
She has been ordered to wear a hijab
on screen to cover her hair. “I don’t like it
but if it means I can still present the news
it’s better than nothing.” She has stopped
wearing nail varnish and white trainers.
“If the Taliban tell me to stop wearing
make-up, I will,” she added.
Some women have taken to the streets,
staging small protests demanding the
right to work and education — and some
of these brave activists have been forced
into hiding after the Taliban came look-
ing for them.
In a flat in Kabul, four young women
were sitting in the darkness, curtains
drawn and with five locks on the door.
Propane gas cannisters had been placed
near by and were primed, according to
the women, to be detonated if the Taliban
tried to enter the room.
A pharmacist, a secretary, a human
rights activist and a teacher, all in their
twenties — these women see themselves
as the last resistance to Taliban rule. “Wecan’t just sit by and let all the gains of the
past 20 years go,” one said.
But they are clearly terrified, freezing
at a bang on the door. One went to look
through the peephole — there was
nobody there. Another of the women,
who agreed to be identified only as Far-
iba, 24, had been an administrator in a
ministry. She recalled how she had
slapped one of the Taliban during a pro-
test. A video of the incident went viral.
She then received a call from a col-
league telling her to come to her office as
she was being promoted. “When I got
there, I was told to sit at a table with two
guards behind me. The official put his
phone on the table and showed a picture
of me and other girls protesting. ‘Why are
you doing this?’ he asked. ‘We fought 20
years in the mountains, now you are try-
ing to disrupt things’. ”
She went on: “I told them we were sim-
ply trying to protect our rights and freed-
oms but he said, ‘You’re lucky, this is an
office and ministry, otherwise you
wouldn’t be left alive. We know your
entire family.’ ”
A few days later her sister was
arrested. Police told the local community
leader they would release her only if Far-
iba stopped protesting. She did not.
Last month Taliban soldiers came to
her house, looking for her. “They beat up
two of my brothers and I fled to the roof,”
she said, crying.
“It was night and freezing. Then some-
one told me about this place.” She added:
“No one else is resisting the Taliban. We
can’t stop now or we will lose every-
thing.”If the policy
was intended
to collapse
the Afghan
state, it could
hardly be
better
designedE
very tragedy needs testimony.
Christina Lamb’s jarring,
shocking, anguished chronicle of
the catastrophe facing the
people of Afghanistan in The
Sunday Times last week met that
standard. Her article was
sensational but not
sensationalist. Because it was true.
Across the country, girls as young as
Fatima, 8, who featured in the article,
are being sold into marriage so that
families can feed themselves. Alex
Crawford’s brave reporting on Sky has
shown that body parts are being sold for
the same reason. In effect, the whole
population of 40 million people face
extreme poverty, half face malnutrition,
and already a million children are on the
brink of famine.
It would be convenient for western
policymakers if this humanitarian
carnage could be laid at the door of the
Taliban authorities. But it can’t. They
won the war. They are in charge. But
though they have much to answer for, it
is not Taliban economic policy that has
turned a very poor country into a
starving one.
There are 2,000 staff of the
International Rescue Committee (IRC)
working in Afghanistan. Nearly half are
women. We support education (for girls
as well as boys), child protection,
livelihoods and now healthcare. We
operated throughout the war. We did not
choose the new government, but it is not
our biggest problem today.
Afghanistan has been uniquely
dependent on western policymakers for
20 years. And it still is. Governments in
Washington, London and Berlin choose
whether Afghans sink or have a chance
to swim.
This is not just about the amount of
humanitarian aid. More is needed —
more than $4 billion urgently, according
to the United Nations. The British public
have been very generous, for example
during the December appeal by the
Disasters Emergency Committee,
and donations to organisations such as
the IRC are invaluable. But the
fundamental problem is the economic
collapse. It is a fast-moving downward
escalator that threatens to overwhelm
the aid effort.
Less than six months ago, more than
40 per cent of the formal economy (that
is, not the drug economy) and 75 per
cent of public spending in Afghanistan
came from international donors. It is the
end of that support, overnight, plus the
freeze on the international assets of the
Afghan Central Bank, plus the sanctions
— which are meant to be on individual
Taliban leaders but which have, in fact,
chilled all economic relations inside and
beyond the country — that are the
proximate cause of the current
starvation crisis.DAVID
MILIBAND‘Hermit kingdom’ of New Zealand
falls out of love with its queen
How The Sunday Times revealed the
extent of the catastrophe last weekThrash metal sirens taking
an axe to Middle East’s taboos
Lebanon’s “metalheads” are
mostly men, so the first
audience to experience Slave
to Sirens, the country’s first
all-female thrash metal band,
was left in a state of shock.
“They didn’t expect us,”
said guitarist Lilas Mayassi.
“They were expecting some
sort of all-female Britney
Spears creation.” Maya
Khairallah, the band’s raspy-
voiced frontwoman, has had
plenty to scream about:
Lebanon’s economic
collapse, political turmoil and
the pandemic.
Since she and lead guitarist
Shery Bechara formed the
band in Beirut in 2016, they
have graduated from
jamming at university to
playing Glastonbury. Now
they are the subjects of
Sirens, a documentary that
premiered last month at the
Sundance film festival.
But they have had to battle
deep-rooted prejudice. In the
1990s, powerful Christianinstitutions tried to eradicate
metal culture in Lebanon.
Albums by bands including
Metallica and Nirvana were
banned, and some fans were
arrested for wearing their
T-shirts. Attitudes have
relaxed in recent years but
discrimination persists.
“Being a metalhead is one
thing, but being women in
metal is another thing,” said
Mayassi. “The older
generation don’t get it. They
expect us to be like other
women in this society: get ajob, get married.”
Rita Baghdadi, Sirens’
Moroccan-American film-
maker, said she wanted to
make a film “where women in
the region could be the stars
of their own story... where it
wasn’t all about war and
oppression”.
Despite the anger
expressed in their music, the
band share a persistent sense
of optimism. “Regardless of
all the struggles we believe
there’s always light at the end
of the tunnel,” Mayassi said.India Stoughton
Lilas Mayassi and Shery Bechara of all-female band Slave to Sirens
COURTESY OF SUNDANCE INSTITUTEThe West has left Kabul in
need of cash as well as food
Less than three months after
being sworn in as New
Zealand’s youngest female
prime minister, Jacinda
Ardern announced she was
pregnant with her first child.
“I am not the first woman
to work and have a baby,”
she said.
Six weeks after giving
birth, she was back at work.
Juggling motherhood while
protecting Kiwis from Covid
ensured Ardern, then 37, was
lavished with praise, hailed as
a feminist icon.
Four years on, however,
“Jacindamania” appears to be
fading fast and the woman
voted the “world’s greatest
leader” by Fortune magazine
in 2021 no longer looks quite
so assured: polls show her
Labour Party’s lead over the
opposition has narrowed.
She has faced a backlash
over the treatment of a
pregnant New Zealander.
Charlotte Bellis, a journalist,
had covered the withdrawal
of US troops from
Afghanistan before returning
to her base in Doha, Qatar, to
learn that she was expecting a
child. Sex outside marriage is
illegal in Qatar, and she and
her partner were advised to
leave the country. From
Belgium, with her visa
running out, she spoke to
senior contacts in the
Taliban, who assured Bellis
she and her partner would be
safe in Afghanistan.James Salmon Perth New Zealand has pReturning to her native roved
more difficult. After
submitting dozens of
documents and taking part in
a lottery-style system to
secure a place in hotel
quarantine, the couple were
told their emergency
application had been
rejected.
Bellis’s revelation of her
plight prompted
condemnation of Ardern,
whose government quickly
offered Bellis and her partner
a space in the quarantine
programme. By then, though,
the damage had been done.
Ardern’s opponents accuse
her of turning New Zealand
into a “hermit kingdom” that
has cut itself off from the rest
of the world in pursuit of its
Covid-elimination strategy.
“Quite a lot of people
noted the irony of a pregnant
unmarried woman being
given safe haven in Taliban-
ruled Afghanistan because
she can’t come home to
New Zealand,” said
Chris Bishop
of the opposition
National Party.
In a speech in
Auckland onThursday, Ardern announced
a phased opening of borders
from February 27, with hotel
quarantine ditched for
vaccinated travellers. Kiwis
living in Australia will be the
first allowed in, self-isolating
for ten days. In March, New
Zealanders living further
afield will be allowed back.
Tourists will have to wait
until October, although some
from countries not requiring
a visa — including the UK —
will be allowed in by July or
earlier. “Now it’s time to
move forward together
safely,” Ardern said.
Bellis said the
announcement was a cause
for celebration. But many of
the country’s one million
expats have long since run
out of patience with Ardern.
Neil Protheroe, a New
Zealander hoping to catch
one of the first flights home
from France next month,
described the quarantine
regime as cruel and inhuman.“She wants a legacy of being
the world leader who
defeated Covid. It’s her holy
grail that’s come at the
expense of the wellbeing of a
million people,” he said.
A group of more than
15,000 New Zealanders
abroad are suing the Ardern
government, claiming the
strict border controls are a
breach of their human rights.
The crowdfunded case goes
to the High Court this month.
One poll showed Ardern’s
personal approval rating had
slipped below that of
Christopher Luxon, the new
leader of the opposition, for
the first time since she took
office. Those rating the
government’s handling of the
pandemic as “good” had
dropped from 60 per cent in
October to 46 per cent.
New Zealanders enjoyed
unparalleled freedoms
during the first phase of the
pandemic, as long as they had
no desire to travel overseas.
That changed when the more
contagious Delta strain
emerged: the country was
placed under a national
lockdown.
As the Omicron variant
struck earlier this year,
Ardern introduced new
restrictions, including
compulsory masks in shops
and on public transport and
limits on social gatherings.
She postponed her own
wedding to her partner,
Clarke Gayford. “Such is life,”
Jacinda Ardern’s ratings have hit the skids since lockdown she commented.