Friday, January 28, 2022

The Afghan Tragedy

 Baroness Valerie Amos, a former UN under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs, told Sky News: "The world food programme estimates if we don't urgently get money into the country and help people that there will be three million children under five who will face acute malnutrition by March.

"Of those, a million children will die."

Sir Mark Lowcock, a former UN under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs, told Sky News: "The vast majority of the population are starving and that is the reason people resort to these extreme measures. It's not at all appropriate to enforce a sort of collective punishment on the total population of the country because you don't like the regime that those people haven't chosen." Sir Mark added: "It's not just a question of morality and humanity - that it's not acceptable to impose a collective punishment on 40 million people for things they didn't do - it's also going to be counterproductive because it will antagonise people further, it will create grievances."

Ben Slater, a former British soldier who led an escape effort from Afghanistan after he was stranded in Kabul, said the selling of children has been happening since the fall of Kabul.

"The selling of young girls, for around $200-$300 (£149-240), started immediately, weeks after the takeover," he told Sky News. "Most families live day by day, hand to mouth. That has been going on for months. The selling of organs is horrific and they are fetching about $3,000 (£2,240) on the black market at the moment."

'One million children will die': UK urged to release unspent Afghanistan aid (yahoo.com)

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