Frequently Asked Questions, and Frequently Raised Objections

Why should the US constribute the entire amount needed? Shouldn't other countries, including Muslim countries, contribute too?

The US already gives too much foreign aid.

The US can't afford to pay for the whole amount.

The Afghan people should rise up against the Taliban and take responsibility for their fate.

America helped the Afghans fight off the Soviets; it doesn't owe them any more.

If America tries to help Afghanistan, it'll actually just make Muslims hate the US more. After all, bin Laden objects to the US presence in the Gulf and its alliance with Arab governments.

Giving them food will only create dependency. If they need food, let them buy it.

The Afghans brought it on themselves with their extreme kind of Islam.

Won't giving food just strengthen the Taliban?

Isn't the US feeding Afghanistan now with the airdrops?

 

Why should the US constribute the entire amount needed? Shouldn't other countries, including Muslim countries, contribute too?

The US should not pay for rebuilding Afghanistan single-handed. Other developed countries should pay too; if those Muslim countries which have money to pay for such things want to start putting their money where their mouth is, well, it won't be a moment too soon. But there will be no shortage of things for them to pay for. Right now, in part because of American actions, such as having the borders sealed, there is a real danger of millions of people, overwhelmingly women and children, starving to death. These people were America's allies; honor, at the very least, says that the US should make the gesture of supporting them. Saying ``We won't do it until those other people do it too'' is usually a bad way to make something happen; here it could lead to incredible suffering, whereas if the US leads the way, it could set an example, inspiring other countries to contribute.

 

The US already gives too much foreign aid.

US foreign aid is actually under one percent of the Federal budget, just $13 billion in 1998. A large fraction of it is military aid, mostly spent on purchasing hardware from US arms manufacturers. One third of it goes to just two countries, Israel and Egypt. Aid to Afghanistan was too small to even show up in government statistics in 1998, whereas the US gave $429 million to Guatemala, a country with a population less than half that of Afghanistan's, where civil war has also been raging for years. Over an 8 year period, between 1980 and 1998, aid to Guatemala was almost $2 billion, wheras to Afghanistan it was less than $750 million. (Economic aid figures are taken from Table 1318 of the 2000 Statistical Abstract of the United States, the latest one available; population estimates are taken from the CIA World Factbook.)

 

The US can't afford to pay for the whole amount.

$584 million is a lot of money for any individual, even the very richest. But it is important to keep in mind the scale of the US economy, of the US government, and of what the US is already spending on the crisis. The US economy's output in 1999 was over $9.2 trillion; the Federal budget, $1.7 trillion. (These figures are taken from the 2000 Statistical Abstract of the United States, the latest one available.) The amount the UN is requesting comes to something like ten minutes of the economy's time.

Furthermore, consider what is already being spent in dealing with and responding to the terrorist attack. Congress has allocated $15 billion to bailing out the airlines and $40 billion to immediate cleanup, relief and security in New York and Washington; the President has proposed $3 billion in emergency unemployment insurance (Associated Press, 4 October 2001). Suggestions for the forthcoming economic stimulus package run from $60 billion up to $125 billion (Robert E. Rubin, A Post-Disaster Economy in Need of Repair, NY Times, 30 September 2001). The cost of military actions, which would include the current call up of the reserves and deployment of forces to the Middle East, is not yet clear. The Gulf War cost somewhat more than $60 billion over and above normal military spending (Conduct of the Persian Gulf War: Final Report to Congress by the Department of Defense, 1992). A long-term campaign against terrorists of global reach in some sixty countries, such as the President has called for, can hardly cost less than that. Already there are reports that $600 million is to be given to Pakistan in exchange for support (Washington Post, U.S. Readies Financial Aid for Allies, 2 October 2001).

These are not bad things to spend money on. (But some competent economists are skeptical about the airline bailout: see here or here). The immediate relief effort, however, is about one percent of what the US has already committed to spending, and an even smaller fraction of what it is almost certainly going to spend.

 

The Afghan people should rise up against the Taliban and take responsibility for their fate.

It is much easier for well-fed people in what is still a safe country to say to say things like this, than it is for those who have suffered through more than twenty years of war and four of drought and hunger to do it. One should remember that tens of thousands of Afghans did rise up against their oppressors --- and died fighting them.

 

America helped the Afghans fight off the Soviets; it doesn't owe them any more.

America did help them, but when the Soviets were driven out, it was obvious to everyone, including the CIA and writers for well-established policy journals, that there was every chance of government in Afghanistan collapsing completely, which in due time it did. While the US had substantial influence with all the major forces active in the country (the mujahedin, the political parties, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia), the US simply ignored what happened there, as it predictably collapsed into chaos, and the Pakistanis and the Saudis created the Taliban.

 

If America tries to help Afghanistan, it'll actually just make Muslims hate the US more. After all, bin Laden objects to the US presence in the Gulf and its alliances with Arab governments.

It's hard to see how one more US-supported Muslim state would make anyone any more hostile to America; after all, most governments in the Islamic world are already tied to the US. (Moving eastwards: Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Bosnia, Turkey, Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Oman, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Pakistan, Indonesia, Malaysia.) In any case, it is hard to think of a better counter to the Islamists' charge that the US hates Muslims than to be able to say ``And who fed the Afghans, when they were starving?'' Spending on the famine now is one way to prevent the formation of more terrorist groups, and thus more attacks in the future. Those preventable disasters would cost far more ecomomically, and the lives and safety of innocent people are priceless.

 

Giving them food will only create dependency. If they need food, let them buy it.

However one normally feels about market forces, it is hard to see how they will work in this situation. The classic elements for a famine are all in place. Locally --- which is to say, across the country --- farming output has fallen. Most of the country has an arid or semi-arid climate, and farming demands irrigation works, which were destroyed by the Soviets, and latter by the Taliban. The Soviets also, as a matter of policy, mined farmland. Once again, the country is now in its fourth straight year of drought. And food cannot be imported. On the one hand, the transportation system is basically destroyed, and now the borders have been sealed. On the other hand, many people have nothing with which to buy. There is nearly no economy left, especially now that the only remaining cash crop (opium) has been suppressed. More than half of the adult population, i.e., women, is effectively prohibited from earning money. There is no meaningful opposition or free press to shame the government into remedying any of these conditions.

 

The Afghans brought it on themselves with their extreme kind of Islam.

The variety of Islam the Taliban have imposed --- Wahhabism --- was invented in Arabia in the 18th century; it is the official doctrine of Saudi Arabia, whose royal family has been closely associated with the Wahhabi movement since its beginning. Wahhabism had nearly no following in Afghanistan, and certainly no official standing, prior to the 1990s; the Saudis paid for it to be taught in religious schools (madrassas) in Pakistan, which were essentially the only form of education open to the children of Afghan refugees, especially orphans. The students in these schools formed the base of the Taliban. Wahhabism is deeply alien to the history and customs of Afghanistan, which has traditionally followed the (relatively liberal) Hanafi school of Islamic law. This shows up in the Taliban's concerted campaign against the traditional culture, even in such trivial things as their ban on flying kites. Certainly the position of women in traditional Afghan society, while not what it should have been, was immensely better than it has become under the Taliban. (Nobody can do farm work in a burqa.)

 

Won't giving food just strengthen the Taliban?

There are two things to be said in reply to this. First, the men with the guns never starve, until there is literally no food left at all. The question is whether other people will. Condemning everyone in order to starve out the Taliban is at once cruel and unlikely to work. Second, theft and corruption are real concerns, but the UN agencies, and some charities, seem to be running reasonably honest and effective operations. The UN, in particular, has been getting food to people, and has the organization and equipment in place to keep doing so. This is part of why we're specifying support for the UN's operations, and not just relief in general.

 

Isn't the US feeding Afghanistan now with the airdrops?

The airdrops of food and other supplies, begun since the bombing started, are certainly good things. But, even if every package arrives intact and is used, they are only feeding 35,000 to 50,000 people --- less than one percent of those who need to be fed. Reaching the necessary numbers isn't feasible through airdrops; it is through the UN relief agencies.