This is liberation?
By G. Dunkel
What has U.S. war and occupation meant to Afghanistan?
Relief workers estimate that half a million Afghanis are
homeless, living in bombed-out buildings or tents with mud
piled along the sides to keep out drafts. Some 75,000 residents
of Kabul are reported to suffer from tuberculosis, a disease
largely controlled elsewhere in the world.
Kabul has lost 78,000 houses in wars over the last 30 years.
None were repaired in 2002. Its sewers are overflowing, its
narrow streets grid-locked and choked with smog.
Three years of drought have devastated much of the country,
particularly in the south. Rivers and reservoirs have run dry.
Three-quarters of the country's livestock have died. War has
completed the devastation: irrigation systems have been blown
up and roads destroyed.
The 7 million land mines left in the country are still
deadly. NGOs say it would take several thousand workers at
least a decade and cost $500 million to dispose of most of
them.
International donors say $1.8 billion has poured into
Afghanistan in the past year, but only $80 million has reached
the government.
The U.S. is spending about $1 billion a month in Afghanistan
for its military occupation, but only $25 million for aid. (New
York Times magazine, Jan. 5)
That's 2.5 cents on the dollar--not even a fig leaf.
Reprinted from the Jan. 23, 2003, issue of
Workers World newspaper
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