All right, y'all, welcome to the Scott Horton Show.
I'm the Director of the Libertarian Institute, Editorial Director of Antiwar.com, author of the book Fool's Errand, Time to End the War in Afghanistan, and the brand new Enough Already, Time to End the War on Terrorism, and I've recorded more than 5,500 interviews since 2003, almost all on foreign policy, and all available for you at scotthorton.org.
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All right, you guys, introducing Basir Bita, and he is a longtime civil society activist in Afghanistan, and he left Afghanistan when the Taliban took over, and it really is amazing.
I'm sure some of you guys have noticed that all the hawks on TV and in the papers who supported the war for the Afghan people's own good, supposedly, over the last 20 years, now don't seem to care about them whatsoever, as many reports are coming in from all quarters that they're facing an economic depression and a massive hunger and even starvation crisis going in, well, you know, this winter right now as we speak, and so thank you, Basir, for joining us.
Appreciate it.
Pleasure.
So, first of all, what can you tell us about the situation as far as the population in Afghanistan, and I know it's a big country, but a lot has changed in a very short amount of time here, and obviously, the markets that distribute and provide food to everybody must have been severely disrupted, huh?
Well, that's 100% true.
You know, you can see, for example, almost more than 100,000 Afghans were evacuated through evacuation efforts by the U.S. governments to the U.S.
So many others left the country, and tons of hundreds of others are still stuck in Afghanistan who are in dire need of not only being evacuated from the country, but also, as you just mentioned, lack of access to food markets.
Unfortunately, after the Taliban takeover in August, the U.S. froze nearly $10 billion in assets belonging to the Afghan Central Bank, the International Monetary Fund froze the distribution of $450 million, and the World Bank held back hundreds of millions in the Afghan Reconstruction Trust Fund, as they call it.
Meanwhile, to give you a broader picture, Afghan T-shirts have gone without pay since June and hospitals are already closing.
The Afghan people can't be blamed for the oppressive policies of the Taliban.
What we want, what I personally want, is to unfreeze the funds.
Private sector is almost non-functional anymore, as there is neither a food, a stable food market, nor a currency in circulation.
The scale of disaster is unthinkably large.
The U.N. estimated that 23 million people face acute food insecurity, and 1 million children risk dying from malnutrition.
With Afghanistan having sunk into the world's worst humanitarian crisis, nobody was surprised when the United Nations requested $4.5 billion for Asian needs in 2022, which is the largest ever such appeal.
So the situation for women's rights is more than a survival catastrophe.
The crisis is not only about physical access to food materials, but there is a mental breakdown where all Afghans suffer, who already suffered from PTSD and other mental challenges.
Every day I'm in close contact with friends of mine, with my brothers, parents, and I hear different stories of people committing suicide, selling their children, or leaving their children on the street.
Street robbery skyrocketed, and you know that food material prices tripled since the fall of Kabul.
Food prices have tripled, huh?
Tripled.
Yeah.
Now, of course, politically, the problem is simple, right?
Well, we can't give money to the Taliban, and so then that's it.
Our only other choice is to be the worst of poor sports and watch innocent civilians starve?
Well, I believe that there are politically available opportunities to open at least a negotiation with the Taliban, as the UN already had some discussion with the Taliban in order to deliver funds and food materials to the people.
You've been talking with them directly in substantive talks since 2018.
Why stop now?
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
You know, even before the U.S. invasion in 2001, the Taliban were ready to open discussion with the U.S. governments, but the U.S. governments kept refusing.
There were so many people, Afghan experts outside Afghanistan and inside Afghanistan who were consulted before the war.
Their main argument was that if you invade Afghanistan at the end of the day, you will have a big mess left behind.
But the U.S. governments invaded.
The same story happened about Iraq.
And at the end of a decade of so-called intervention, you can see what is left behind in Iraq.
There is no mass destruction weapons found ever.
So there is an opportunity of discussion with the Taliban.
I'm sure the Taliban is now in a situation that they are open for discussion.
Well, obviously, no space or room for accepting women's rights overnight or democracy and elections or whatever they call it.
But there is some room because there are some internal conflict within Taliban as well.
And, you know, for American politics sake, people really need to make the distinction, not that these guys are great guys or anything, but the Taliban, in a very real sense, they are extremely conservative as opposed to, for example, the Islamic State when they rolled into western Iraq and were as, you know, Patrick Coburn compared them to the Khmer Rouge, where they just essentially were as radical as could be and, you know, just committed to mass chaos.
That's not what the Taliban is.
And so for all of their faults, it seems like essentially now that the war is over and they've won it, you could parachute aid workers into certainly any provincial capital in the country and they would not be in danger there.
It's not a war zone anymore.
They would be under the protection of the new state as run by the Taliban.
And if all they're doing is delivering wheat to hungry people, there shouldn't be anything in the world that stands in the way of that.
Well, obviously, yeah, Taliban, we can I can hear stories that there are some NGOs or humanitarian organizations working on the grounds in Afghanistan.
And I hear from friends of mine and relatives that they have already received some support from them.
I'm sure the Taliban will won't disagree with delivering food materials or humanitarian assistance.
But the issue is still over the U.S. and its allies.
You know, I believe that the U.S. and allies just are trying to make a face for themselves after spending almost three trillion dollar in Afghanistan war.
And then you could see the Taliban is back on the power.
This is all I believe that the U.S. the main reason is the U.S. still freezing the money is just to show that the U.S. citizen and the world that we are against Taliban's.
We will we won't we will even expand our sanctions if the Taliban do not accept very basic women's rights and democracy or whatever they call it.
Hold on just one second.
Be right back.
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Right.
Yeah.
All their original pie in the sky goals that they made up so that they could have an excuse to stay in the war and not leave it.
Which, of course, the Taliban have no intention or capability of delivering for that matter.
Not at all.
If it came down to it.
So listen, I mean, it's just kind of implied throughout this whole discussion, right, is that everybody's just sort of too distracted and detached.
And this policy, it's been considered and decided on by very few in the White House and the Pentagon and the State Department and whoever.
But that essentially everybody else is over it.
Nobody's really kind of paying attention to this and they could stay on like this.
There's not really a recognition that, you know, first of all, we could release the funds that we're holding and then second of all, do everything we can to help organizations, you know, aid organizations get in there to help feed people.
And, you know, even if it's all about public relations for the empire, how about being a good sport in your loss and still, you know, reaching out an extra helping hand to the civilian population under the control of the people who beat you in the war?
You know, for no other reason, that might look good, you know, to some State Department flunky somewhere or another that like, hey, what if we were kind for a change just for a minute, you know?
Yeah, you know, I believe that when the U.S. and its allies consented that it's time to attack Afghanistan 2001 and just over a month, the U.S. managed to kick out Taliban out of the country and then 20 years of fight against terrorism, which ended up to fruitless efforts and a big mess left behind.
I believe that now it's time for international community to once again step in and make a coalition as they invaded the U.S. at the Afghanistan 20 years ago.
It's time that they should form and a more realistic approach would be to work with the new Taliban government or regime for the sake of at least basic state services.
The Taliban lack such a capability, as you just mentioned, to deliver these services, but for the sake of the future of the people who already suffered for decades by the direct involvement of the U.S. supporting the insurgents groups, even the rise of Taliban for the first time and the second time, now is their time to step in and help the Afghans to at least they can suffer less, if not relief from the pains.
Right.
Well, listen, I sure appreciate the sentiment there.
And now, do you know who's really doing very much in Europe or in the United States or Canada for that matter to actually overcome the decision that's already been made here?
Obviously, to try to get them to loosen up and change their mind.
I know there have been some efforts.
Well, yeah, there are some efforts.
A friend of mine who used to be, as I call him, a big donkey in the governments, in the puppet governments, but who is now working for the Taliban governments, I had a conversation with him who said that there is some sort of tendency from within the Taliban to open a conversation with the international community.
There are some efforts from Canada, some civil society organizations, NGOs, who are trying to not only evacuate Afghans, but also to deliver services.
I hear even from friends of mine, peace activists and civil society activists in the US and from different parts of the world, Germany, that there should be some pressure over the international community to get them to have at least a conversation.
In our 21st century, there is no more space for bloodshed, for brutality, for bullying, that it's time to invade again a country and make them so-called free of dictatorship.
So there are some pressure from different parts of the world to get the international community, but I'm hopeful that someday they understand what they left behind.
And now it's time to be more truthful to the citizens of your own country, not just to make a face for yourself.
Right.
Yeah.
And listen, I'm never one to justify our government doing anything to or for anybody.
But in this case, we're talking about providing cash dollars and minimal calories for people.
Wheat to eat so they don't lay down dead or go completely helpless out there.
And for some kind of transition period, it's hardly the worst thing in the budget.
And in fact, if they would just give the Taliban the money that belongs to the sovereign government, as you mentioned already, and just get out of the way, lift all their sanctions and encourage other nations to go and do everything they can to, that'd be good enough, frankly, if they were really going about it in a way trying to help.
Well, you know, the current situation for Taliban is really tough.
Taliban in different provinces, you see their forces, those who work for the Taliban, who sacrifice themselves for application of Sharia law around Afghanistan and to bring Taliban again to power, they are losing their hope for their future.
As they can see, they don't get paid.
They don't have their resources available to them as those who sacrifice their families, their friends, relatives.
They are an internal conflict between different fractions of Taliban.
The younger generation believe that they sacrifice themselves on the battlegrounds and they are strictly against any democratic values or westernized terms and words like democracy and women's rights.
There are some older generations who used to administer the Taliban regime back in 1996 to 2001 who are a bit more open to the conversations.
There's no chance to unfreeze $10 billion overnight and let the Taliban regime have access to it.
That's not going to work either.
That is a political suicidist's will.
All right.
Well, listen, I appreciate your effort in bringing this to light and trying to keep people paying attention.
There's so many greatest humanitarian disasters in the world going on at the same time right now.
It's hard to keep track of them.
Of course, Yemen also being inflicted by the United States or suffering under violence inflicted by the United States and its allies there as well.
If every nation in the region took a mostly hands-off approach and just let things settle out in Afghanistan, who knows how long it might take that country to reach a decent kind of settlement and status quo where they could just try to live happy and prosperous lives instead of all this constant violence, which has been inflicted on them from the outside essentially for the last couple of generations here.
With plenty of domestic actors, to be sure, involved.
Yeah.
Well, domestic actors as well as regional players, Iran, Pakistan.
I can see that Pakistani government is now afraid of the Taliban.
You never thought the Taliban would try to – there is some dispute over some regional and domestic interest between the Taliban and Pakistan, you can see.
But Taliban is receiving support from other neighboring countries.
I believe that China has already reached its hand to Taliban governments.
Some – there could be some possible support from Russia, Iran already.
And if the sanctions continue and lasting for longer time, I believe that Taliban will again reach out to internal resources they already have and they've made money through like drug trafficking, selling out the mines, like copper mines, and reaching out to others to receive support.
Yeah.
All right.
Well, thank you again.
I really appreciate your time on the show, Basir.
Thank you so much.
All right, you guys.
That is Basir Bita, a longtime civil society activist in Afghanistan.
And now in Canada.
