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<a class="gmail-domain gmail-reader-domain" href="https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20211224-an-american-tale-as-yet-untold-by-the-afghans/">middleeastmonitor.com</a>
<h1 class="gmail-reader-title">An American Tale as yet untold by the Afghans</h1>
<div class="gmail-credits gmail-reader-credits">Yvonne Ridley - <span>December 24, 2021</span> </div></div><div class="gmail-content"><div class="gmail-moz-reader-content gmail-reader-show-element"><div id="gmail-readability-page-1" class="gmail-page"><div id="gmail-post-content"> <p>According
to Christians and the post-Christian world in which many of us live,
this is the season of peace and goodwill to all. However, I derived
little Christmas cheer from an incredible tweet sent by Linda
Thomas-Greenfield, the US Ambassador to the United Nations this week.</p> <p>I
imagine that the newly-liberated Afghans will be none too impressed by
her response to a UN Security Council resolution to send much-needed
humanitarian aid to war-torn Afghanistan after 20 years of occupation by
US and NATO forces. Basking in what she no doubt viewed as US
benevolence, Thomas-Greenfield tweeted: "I applaud the <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/UNSC?src=hashtag_click" target="_blank">#UNSC</a> for unanimously voting for this carveout [<i>sic</i>], which is desperately needed by the humanitarian community in Afghanistan."</p> <p>But
what she — and most of the Western media failed to mention — is that
millions of Afghan children are in desperate need and on the brink of
starvation because the US government has frozen Afghanistan's assets
worth more than $9 billion, a move which is wrecking the already fragile
economy. This is America's way of punishing the Afghan people for not
rising up against the Taliban when <a href="https://www.france24.com/en/asia-pacific/20210811-biden-says-afghans-must-fight-for-themselves-as-taliban-take-most-of-country" target="_blank">ordered</a>
to do so by US President Joe Biden. It's also payback to the regime for
the humiliating defeat and retreat suffered by US forces at the hands
of the movement.</p> <div id="gmail-attachment_490039" class="gmail-wp-caption"><p><img src="https://i1.wp.com/www.middleeastmonitor.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/IMG_3388-scaled.jpg?fit=933%2C579&quality=85&strip=all&zoom=1&ssl=1" alt="18 million Afghans, half the country, need humanitarian assistance and roughly 3 million are internally displaced - Cartoon [Sabaaneh/MiddleEastMonitor]" style="margin-right: 0px;" width="413" height="257"></p><p class="gmail-wp-caption-text">18
million Afghans, half the country, need humanitarian assistance and
roughly 3 million are internally displaced – Cartoon
[Sabaaneh/MiddleEastMonitor]</p></div><p>There seems to be a conspiracy of silence in the Western media about the looming crisis, although one British newspaper <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/bdbb57ab-84a8-48b2-ae6f-6177f7830064" target="_blank">exclaimed</a>:
"Millions face starvation this winter after the withdrawal of foreign
aid after the Islamist group took power." The inference is clear: the
Taliban government in Kabul is to blame. Not the West for occupying
Afghanistan for 20 years and failing miserably to do what it expects the
Taliban to have achieved in a matter of months. And not the US Treasury
for freezing those desperately needed assets. It's the Taliban's fault.</p> <p>However, earlier this week hundreds of angry Afghans <a href="https://pic.twitter.com/zVXaBZp2do" target="_blank">poured onto the streets</a>
of Kabul to protest against the looming humanitarian crisis, and they
knew exactly who to blame. Young men in the capital's Abdul Haq Square
had protested earlier over sanctions, the frozen assets of the Afghan
Central Bank, and the US-engineered crisis.</p> <p>Sadly, these
demonstrations are largely ignored by most journalists who are
clambering over each other to get into children's hospitals to tell the
tale about human misery made in the good ol' US of A without once
mentioning Uncle Sam's role. It's a bit like telling the Nativity Story
without mentioning Herod.</p> <p>It doesn't matter how much gloss and
spin is put on America's involvement in Afghanistan over the past two
decades, hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians have died as a
direct result of the US invasion. Now millions more face an uncertain
future involving starvation and worse.</p> <p><strong>READ: <a title="UNSC adopts resolution to facilitate humanitarian aid in Afghanistan" href="https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20211222-unsc-adopts-resolution-to-facilitate-humanitarian-aid-in-afghanistan/">UNSC adopts resolution to facilitate humanitarian aid in Afghanistan</a></strong></p> <p>Of
course, such hypocrisy is nothing new to Afghans who pass their history
down from generation to generation by word of mouth lest they forget.
They know, for example, that it was Afghanistan which apparently
triggered <a href="https://winstonchurchill.org/resources/in-the-media/churchill-in-the-news/churchill-an-unlikely-adviser-in-the-afghan-conflict/" target="_blank">Winston Churchill's thirst for war</a>
in 1897. "All who resist will be killed without quarter," he wrote,
because the Pashtuns need to "recognise the superiority of race."
Churchill also wrote about how "every tribesman caught was speared or
cut down at once." Proud of the terror he helped inflict on the people
of Afghanistan, <a href="https://medium.com/@write_12958/the-crimes-of-winston-churchill-c5e3ecb229b3" target="_blank">one observer noted</a>, he was well on the road to becoming a genocidal maniac.</p> <p>Winston
Churchill was once credited with saying that history is written by the
victors, but in the case of Afghanistan 2021 it seems that the Americans
are determined to reinvent their disastrous 20-year venture into the
so-called graveyard of empires. The Western media seems to be complicit
in this re-working of recent history.</p> <p>For the record, it should be acknowledged that the US lost the war in Afghanistan; beat a hasty retreat; and revived the <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/08/16/watch-saigon-kabul-now-afghanistan-airport-evacuation-compared/" target="_blank">awful memories</a>
of the Fall of Saigon when American troops fled from Kabul. That should
have been the end of the story, but Washington's meddling in Afghan
affairs is ongoing. It's an American Tale as yet untold by the Afghans,
but they will one day. Rest assured they will.</p><br></div></div></div>
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