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Showing posts with the label US army

Afghanistan needs immediate support, physical cash. Inaction is untenable

  The Taliban’s cruelties are horrendous, but withholding international support and maintaining blanket sanctions will only hurt the long-suffering Afghan people. Afghanistan’s humanitarian situation is spiraling into catastrophe. Millions of Afghans are now facing severe economic stress and food insecurity in the wake of the Taliban’s August takeover, set off by widespread lost income, cash shortages, and rising food costs. Officials with the UN and several foreign governments are warning of an economic collapse and risks of worsening acute malnutrition and outright famine. Surveys by the World Food Program (WFP) reveal over nine in ten Afghan families have insufficient food for daily consumption, half stating they have run out of food at least once in the last two weeks. One in three Afghans is already acutely hungry. Other United Nations reports warn that over 1 million more children could face acute malnutrition in the coming year. One main cause of the crisis is that governmen...

Trump’s troop withdrawal from Afghanistan may put Biden in a tough spot

  Biden may find that one of his first acts as president will be to send more troops to a war he wanted to end 11 years ago As President Donald Trump tries to end America’s longest war, he has settled on a compromise. Instead of withdrawing all US troops from Afghanistan by Christmas, as he boasted in a tweet in October, he will be leaving behind a small counterterrorism force. It’s tempting to view the development with a sense of relief. A full withdrawal from Afghanistan, or for that matter Iraq, would have been a humiliation for the US on the world stage and a likely prelude to the collapse of two elected governments for which America has invested significant blood and treasure. That said, avoiding calamity is not the same as wise statecraft. Trump’s final military act is reckless, particularly in  Afghanistan . Officially, the US will be reducing from around 4,500 US troops to 2,500. (Some 500 of the 3,000 Americans in Iraq will also come home.) That will still mean, in th...