Afghanistan needs help, not bickering

This is an editorial from China Daily.

One year after the withdrawal of US-led coalition forces from Afghanistan, the country is facing a deepening humanitarian and economic crisis.

More than half of the Afghan population — some 24 million people — need assistance and close to 19 million are facing acute levels of food insecurity, UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator Martin Griffiths told a UN Security Council meeting on Monday. The situation will soon become worse as the onset of winter will send already high fuel and food prices skyrocketing. "The consequences of inaction on both the humanitarian and development fronts will be catastrophic and difficult to reverse," Griffiths warned.

The United States, which waged a 20-year "war on terror" in Afghanistan only to make a hasty and humiliating withdrawal after its failure to establish a viable, US-friendly regime, bears full responsibility for the dire situation Afghanistan finds itself in, given that the war has devastated its economy and upended people's livelihoods. While Washington's vindictive decision to freeze Afghanistan's overseas assets worth more than $9 billion as part of its sanctions against the new Taliban government has pushed the country's economy to the brink of collapse.

Yet rather than learning a lesson from the longest war in its history — which 50 percent of the US people believe was a mistake, according to a new Gallup poll — and contributing to the rebuilding of the destroyed country, the US has tried to shift blame by pointing an accusing finger at China for not doing enough to help its neighbor, with US Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield claiming at the United Nations that China's contributions to reconstruction have been as similarly "underwhelming" as Russia's.

Which is completely false, given the fact that China has always firmly supported Afghanistan's peace, stability and development, and has been making efforts to the best of its ability in this regard. The "pine nuts air corridor", which was re-opened shortly after the war, has contributed greatly to China's importing of Afghan products and thus the recovery of the country's war-torn economy, and become a symbol of Chinese assistance to the Afghan people.

The US should put up and shut up.

Political bickering on the Afghanistan issue will do little to alleviate the pains of the Afghan people. The international community, especially those countries responsible for Afghanistan's plight, must take concrete actions by providing humanitarian and development aid to and ending sanctions against the country as soon as possible. This is because a peaceful and stable Afghanistan will serve the interests of all nations.