“Hunger and malnutrition are taking hold of innocent people caught up in vicious conflict. Unaccompanied children are arriving alone in East Darfur, starving, and deeply traumatized,” said Abdirahman Ali, CARE Sudan’s Country Director. “Conflict, access challenges, and now severe funding cuts are worsening the catastrophe. Response services are collapsing, and the Nutrition sector, responsible for coordinating lifesaving efforts across Sudan, remains chronically underfunded. This means that the children who need help the most are receiving almost nothing. If the world continues to look away, more and more lives will slip away.”

Currently, the nutrition sector response is only 12% funded. Over 637,000 people are experiencing catastrophic, life-threatening hunger, which is the worst level possible on the global scale for measuring hunger crises.

The sharp drop in international funding has only worsened the crisis. Major cuts have forced agencies and local organizations to reduce or suspend operations in many areas. This has meant less food, fewer therapeutic nutrition programs for the severely malnourished, and no safety net for the increasing number of displaced children arriving daily. In East Darfur, the number of severely malnourished children has soared. These children, already weak from hunger and mental turmoil, struggle to fight off deadly diseases like cholera, which is spreading across the country.

Fatima*, a 45-year-old mother of five, fled the conflict in Nyala, South Darfur, and sought refuge in Alnaeem IDP camp in East Darfur. “After the long, painful journey, the community kitchen gave us comfort, as now my children were finally able to get a meal,” she said. But when the kitchen shut down due to funding cuts, everything changed. Families began skipping meals, eating late, and watching their children grow weak and sick. We started suffering again,” she added.

CARE Sudan, alongside local partner Emergency Response Rooms, is responding through three community kitchens run by community volunteers in Alnaeem camp, which shelters displaced people and families. These kitchens are a vital lifeline, serving hot meals to 18,000 people, mostly women and children. At the same time, families receive a food basket that contains sugar, lentils, oil, flour, and salt, which should be enough for one month. But without adequate and consistent funding, even these services are at risk of ceasing, just like many others that already have.

“We are calling on donors and governments to honor pledges and increase much-needed funding to the Sudan Humanitarian Response Plan,” Ali said. “These children are our collective responsibility. Every day that passes without food, clean water, and much-needed nutritional supplements brings them closer to death. We need immediate and sustained investment in nutrition and food to protect and save these lives today and in the difficult weeks ahead.”

CARE Sudan urges immediate restoration and increased support for the nutrition response. The children displaced by conflict in Sudan did not choose war, hunger, or fear.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

Dr. Nick Maynard, a surgeon who has just returned from volunteering in Gaza for the past month, describes a pattern reminiscent of “target practice” visible in the injuries medical staff are treating in Gaza. As evidence grows of deliberate massacres of Palestinians seeking aid at the U.S.- and Israeli-backed aid sites, Maynard says the pattern of injuries suggests that Israeli military forces and other security contractors staffing the sites are “playing some sort of game” in their targeting of civilians, shooting at the head one day, “the abdomen tomorrow, the testicles the day after that.” Because of Israel’s blockade on food and medicine outside of the sparse supplies available at these dangerous aid sites, Maynard continues, normally survivable injuries have become fatal. “Because they’re so malnourished, their tissues don’t heal. Their immune systems are suppressed. … They often end up breaking down, causing terrible infections inside the body, and frequently these patients die.”

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

“Israel is starving Gazan journalists into silence. They are not just reporters, they are frontline witnesses, abandoned as international media were pulled out and denied entry,” said CPJ Regional Director Sara Qudah. “The world must act now: protect them, feed them, and allow them to recover while other journalists step in to help report. Our response to their courageous 650 plus-days of war reporting cannot simply be to let them starve to death.”

On Tuesday, CPJ launched its Voices From Gaza video series of Palestinian journalists describing their challenges working in Gaza. In the first video, Moath al Kahlout said his cousin was shot dead while waiting for humanitarian aid.

As Israel partially eased its 11-week total blockade of Gaza in May, CPJ published the testimony of six journalists who described how starvation, dizziness, brain fog, and sickness threatened their ability to report.

Since then, more than 1,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, while trying to get food aid, the majority near sites where Israel and the United States’ controversial, militarized Gaza Humanitarian Foundation was delivering supplies.

‘Gaza is dying’

In recent days, numerous Palestinian journalists have spoken out about their desperation:

• On June 20, Al Jazeera correspondent Anas Al Sharif posted online, “I am drowning in hunger, trembling in exhaustion, and resisting the fainting that follows me every moment… Gaza is dying. And we die with it.”

• Sally Thabet, correspondent for Al-Kofiya satellite channel, told CPJ that she fainted consciousness after doing a live broadcast on July 20 because she had not eaten all day. She regained consciousness in Al-Shifa hospital, where doctors gave her an intravenous drip for rehydration and nutrition. In an online video, she described how she and her three daughters were starving.

Another Palestinian journalist, Shuruq As’ad said Thabet was the third journalist to collapse on air from starvation that week, and posted a photograph of Thabet with the drip in her hand.

• During a live broadcast on July 20, Al-Araby TV correspondent Saleh Al-Natour said,

“We have no choice but to write and speak; otherwise, we will all die. At some point, journalists will collapse too, and they will fall to the ground in front of you, in front of the cameras, and on air … Today, the feeling of fainting came again, and to prevent that from happening, I ate some sugar that I had been saving for a while.”

• On July 21, CPJ International Press Freedom Awardee Shrouq Al Aila told CPJ that she was continuously losing weight due to lack of food and experiences severe weakness, fatigue, and dizziness.

• On July 21, Agence France-Presse’s union said that the news agency’s 10 freelance journalists reporting from Gaza were all threatened by famine, gunfire, and disease. “Without immediate intervention, the last reporters in Gaza will die,” it said.

APF and France’s foreign minister later said that Jean-Noël Barrot later said that they hoped Israel would allow the journalists to be evacuated.

• On July 22, a photo and video of Algerian state TV correspondent Wesam Abu Zaid taking part in a protest denouncing starvation of Gaza went viral online. Zaid held up a sign saying, “A hungry journalist reporting on hunger.”

“We have all suffered from weight loss, dizziness, and an inability to stand or walk as a result of not eating,” Zaid told CPJ, adding that it was hard for him to keep working.

• On July 23,  Al Jazeera Media Network called for an end to “this forced starvation that does not spare journalists who are the bearers of truth.”

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) told CPJ via email that, “Despite the false claims that are being spread, the State of Israel does not limit the number of humanitarian aid trucks entering the Gaza Strip.” It said that delays in the collection of aid from crossing points into Gaza by international aid organizations “harm the situation and the food security of Gaza’s residents.”

COGAT, the Israeli unit responsible for humanitarian initiatives, told CPJ via email that, “Despite Hamas’s false propaganda campaign, the IDF, through COGAT, continues to work in coordination with international actors to allow and facilitate the continued entry of humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip, in accordance with international law.”

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by CPJ Staff.

BEARING WITNESS: By Cole Martin in occupied Bethlehem

Kia ora koutou,

I’m a Kiwi journo in occupied Bethlehem, here’s a brief summary of today’s events across the Palestinian and Israeli territories from on the ground.

Israeli forces killed over 200 Palestinians in Gaza over the last 48 hours, injuring over 1037. Countless more remain under the rubble and in unreachable zones. 450 killed seeking aid, 39 missing, and around 3500 injured at the joint US-Israeli humanitarian foundation “death traps”.

Forty one  killed by Israeli forces since dawn today, including three children in an attack east of Gaza City. Gaza’s Al-Quds brigades destroyed a military bulldozer in southern Gaza.

*

Settlers, protected by soldiers, violently attacked Palestinian residents near the southern village of Susiya last night, including children. The West Bank siege continues with Israeli occupation forces severely restricting movement between Palestinian towns and cities. Continued military/settler assaults across the occupied territories.

*

Iranian strikes targeted Ben Gurion airport and several military sites in the Israeli territories. Israeli regime discuss a 3.6 billion shekel defence budget increase.

*

400 killed and 3000 injured by Israel’s attacks on Iran, in the nine days since Israel’s aggression began. Iranian authorities have arrested dozens more linked to Israeli intelligence, and cut internet for the last three days to prevent internal drone attacks from agents within their territories.

Israeli strikes have targeted a wide range of sites; missile depots, nuclear facilities, residential areas, and reportedly six ambulances today.

Cole Martin is an independent New Zealand photojournalist based in the Middle East and a contributor to Asia Pacific Report.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by Pacific Media Watch.

New Zealand humanitarian aid for Gaza worth up to $29 million is being blocked by Israel on the border of the besieged enclave, says the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa.

PSNA co-chair John Minto said in a statement today that this aid was loaded on some of the 9000 aid trucks sitting ready on the border with Gaza to try to lift the Israeli created famine.

Israel cut off all food, medicine, fuel, and nearly all water supplies entering Gaza three months ago and the Gaza Health Ministry reports that the Palestinian death toll has now topped 54,000 since the war on the enclave began.

• READ MORE: Israel’s attacks on Gaza have killed over 54,000 since start of war
• Winston Peters joins allies demanding Israel allow aid into Gaza
• Other Israeli war on Gaza reports

New Zealand’s Foreign Minister Winston Peters said last week that the humanitarian situation in Gaza was “simply intolerable”.

Minto said that since then — while Israel had refused to allow more than a trickle of aid into Gaza, and escalated its already horrific military onslaught — the only public statement by Peters had been to offer condolences for the shooting of two Israeli diplomats in Washington.

“Our government’s selective indifference to mass murder is making all of us complicit,” Minto said.

Famine has begun and the UN has cited 14,000 babies are at imminent risk of starving to death.

UN officials estimate 600 truckloads of aid a day are needed to feed the people in Gaza.

Gaza’s own local food production has been destroyed by Israel.

Some 70 percent of Gaza is already occupied by Israel or under Israeli evacuation orders.

NZ ‘must take lead again’
Minto said New Zealand had taken a lead in the past and must do so again.

“Our government should be advocating internationally for the enforcement of a protective no-fly zone over Gaza, and a multinational military protection for aid convoys so they can go into Gaza whether Israel approves them or not,” he said.

“At home we should be sending Israel an equally clear message. We must send the Israeli ambassador packing and immediately sanction Israel by ending all trade and other links.

“As each day passes with no concrete action from New Zealand, our government is linking us with the most massive and ongoing war crime of the 21st century.

“Our government will never live down it’s complicity but might salvage some credibility by acting now.”

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

Protesting New Zealanders donned symbolic masks modelled on a Palestinian artist’s handiwork in Auckland’s Takutai Square today to condemn Israel’s starvation as war weapon against Gaza and the NZ prime minister’s weak response.

Coming a day after the tabling of Budget 2025 in Parliament, peaceful demonstrators wore hand-painted masks inspired by Gaza-based Palestinian artist Reem Arkan, who is fighting for her life alongside hundreds of thousands of the displaced Gazans.

The “bodies” represented more than 53,000 Palestinians killed by Israel’s brutal 19-month war on Gaza.

• READ MORE: Children among 29 ‘starvation-related deaths’ in Gaza; Israel pounds Strip
• Australia’s Wong condemns ‘abhorrent, outrageous’ Israeli comments over blocked aid
• Other Israeli war on Gaza reports

The protest coincided with Prime Minister Christopher Luxon addressing the Trans-Tasman Business Circle in Auckland.

The demonstrators said they chose this moment and location to “highlight the alarmingly tepid response” by the New Zealand government to what global human rights organisations — such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch — have branded as war crimes and acts of collective punishment amounting to genocide.

“This week, we heard yet another call for Israel to abide by international law. This is not leadership. It’s appeasement,” said a spokesperson, Olivia Coote.

“The time for statements has long passed. What we are witnessing in Gaza is a humanitarian catastrophe, and New Zealand must impose meaningful sanctions.

“Israel’s actions, including the deliberate targeting of civilian infrastructure, forced displacement, and obstruction of humanitarian aid, constitute grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions of which we are signatories.”

Green Party Co-Leader Chlöe Swarbrick challenged Prime Minister Luxon in Parliament over his government’s response earlier this week, saying: “We’ve had lots of words. We need action.”

Luxon claimed that sanctions were in place — but the only measure taken has been a travel ban on 12 extremist Israeli settlers from the West Bank.

“This is an action that does nothing to protect the more than two million Palestinians in Gaza who face daily bombardment, siege, and starvation,” Coote said.

The protesters are calling on the New Zealand government to act immediately by:

• Imposing sanctions on Israel; and
• Suspending all diplomatic and trade relations with Israel until there is an end to hostilities and full compliance with international humanitarian law.

“This government must not be complicit in atrocities through silence and inaction,” Coote said. “The people of Aotearoa New Zealand demand leadership as the world watches a genocide unfold in real time.”

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

“People are starving to death, and this is a fact that we are witnessing and experiencing nowadays,” says Oxfam’s food security coordinator in Gaza, Mahmoud Alsaqqa. More than 10 weeks after Israel instituted a total siege on Gaza, blocking all food and other aid from entering, hunger has reached catastrophic levels in the Palestinian territory. This comes as a new United Nations report warns one in every five people in Gaza is facing starvation, while Save the Children says every child is now at risk of famine. The World Food Programme and charities working in Gaza say they have completely run out of supplies and can no longer feed people.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

Palestinian writer Mosab Abu Toha has just been awarded the 2025 Pulitzer Prize for Commentary for his essays about the Palestinian experience in the face of the U.S.-backed Israeli assault on Gaza. He joins Democracy Now! to discuss his work, the necessity of advocating for Palestinian rights, and the violence of Israeli occupation. Abu Toha, who evacuated Gaza in late 2023 after being arrested, beaten and detained by the Israeli military, now resides in Syracuse, New York. He says that, while grateful for the platform granted by the Pulitzer, he cannot celebrate the achievement while “my sisters, my brothers and my parents in Gaza are starving.” Israel’s blockade of the Gaza Strip has trapped millions of Palestinians in famine conditions, unable to evacuate and under threat of daily bombings and Israeli troop movements. “The only celebration for me is when there is an immediate and permanent ceasefire in Gaza [and] the West Bank, and when justice and peace are served in Palestine,” says Abu Toha.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair

As a child, I felt so fancy when we used the purple food stamps — those were the pretty ones.

We were a hardworking, loving family. My parents ensured we weren’t around anyone who tried to make us feel “less than” for needing help to make ends meet.

That’s just reality in America. When the federal minimum wage remains stuck at $7.25 while prices for everything else increase month after month, year after year…yeah, we’re going to need some help feeding our families, affording health care, and keeping a roof over our heads. Where I live, the hourly cost of child care alone is more than twice the minimum wage.

So as an adult I again rely on food stamps, now called the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, to feed my family. SNAP helps over 40 million Americans put food on the table.

And I’m watching with fear as the Republican majority in Congress and the Trump administration propose slashing food assistance to 40 million people and denying free and reduced school meals to 12 million children. Even Meals on Wheels, already deeply underfunded, has taken a hit recently.

“So, go to a food pantry,” these people say. The reality is that for every one meal that food pantries struggle to supply, SNAP provides nine. And the Trump administration is also cutting funding for food banks.

“Get a job. Budget better,” they say. I have a job, and I know how to budget.

But you can’t “budget better” when there isn’t enough in your paycheck to cover even basic human needs. Most people who receive SNAP benefits who are able to work do work. Two-thirds are children, seniors, or people with disabilities. We’re all at risk of losing even this modest assistance to feed ourselves and our families.

‘We’re just cutting waste, fraud, and abuse in the SNAP program,” they say. But the fraud rate in SNAP is just 1 percent. So why is food for children, families, people with disabilities, workers, and seniors on the chopping block?

Let’s get beyond the false rhetoric to the truth: The new administration and its allies in Congress want to fund a massive tax giveaway to the richest Americans and the largest corporations. So they’re taking our taxpayer dollars away from programs that support us and giving them to those who need the least help.

They all took an oath to serve us, but instead they’re betraying us. The rich have so much already, but they always seem to want more.

Even though we didn’t have a lot of money, my father always worked in our community to help others. I do the same to help my neighbors find the resources they need and to hold our elected officials accountable. My heart is full of love. When I look at my community, I see the beauty and the greatness among the need.

We may be poor due to this country’s wage and income system, which rewards inherited wealth over hard work and disinvests in families and communities. But we know the values of family, community, work, and service. We demand that those elected to serve us do the same.

The post Starving the Poor to Feed the Rich appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Tania Whitfield.

Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair

As a child, I felt so fancy when we used the purple food stamps — those were the pretty ones.

We were a hardworking, loving family. My parents ensured we weren’t around anyone who tried to make us feel “less than” for needing help to make ends meet.

That’s just reality in America. When the federal minimum wage remains stuck at $7.25 while prices for everything else increase month after month, year after year…yeah, we’re going to need some help feeding our families, affording health care, and keeping a roof over our heads. Where I live, the hourly cost of child care alone is more than twice the minimum wage.

So as an adult I again rely on food stamps, now called the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, to feed my family. SNAP helps over 40 million Americans put food on the table.

And I’m watching with fear as the Republican majority in Congress and the Trump administration propose slashing food assistance to 40 million people and denying free and reduced school meals to 12 million children. Even Meals on Wheels, already deeply underfunded, has taken a hit recently.

“So, go to a food pantry,” these people say. The reality is that for every one meal that food pantries struggle to supply, SNAP provides nine. And the Trump administration is also cutting funding for food banks.

“Get a job. Budget better,” they say. I have a job, and I know how to budget.

But you can’t “budget better” when there isn’t enough in your paycheck to cover even basic human needs. Most people who receive SNAP benefits who are able to work do work. Two-thirds are children, seniors, or people with disabilities. We’re all at risk of losing even this modest assistance to feed ourselves and our families.

‘We’re just cutting waste, fraud, and abuse in the SNAP program,” they say. But the fraud rate in SNAP is just 1 percent. So why is food for children, families, people with disabilities, workers, and seniors on the chopping block?

Let’s get beyond the false rhetoric to the truth: The new administration and its allies in Congress want to fund a massive tax giveaway to the richest Americans and the largest corporations. So they’re taking our taxpayer dollars away from programs that support us and giving them to those who need the least help.

They all took an oath to serve us, but instead they’re betraying us. The rich have so much already, but they always seem to want more.

Even though we didn’t have a lot of money, my father always worked in our community to help others. I do the same to help my neighbors find the resources they need and to hold our elected officials accountable. My heart is full of love. When I look at my community, I see the beauty and the greatness among the need.

We may be poor due to this country’s wage and income system, which rewards inherited wealth over hard work and disinvests in families and communities. But we know the values of family, community, work, and service. We demand that those elected to serve us do the same.

The post Starving the Poor to Feed the Rich appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Tania Whitfield.

The post Bombing the Bombed, Displacing the Displaced, Starving the Starved appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Jeffrey St. Clair.

Aid groups warn Israel is wiping northern Gaza off the map, and the Biden administration is threatening to cut military assistance to Israel — but not for at least 30 days. This comes as the U.S. has continued to arm Israel despite findings by its own experts at USAID and the State Department that Israel has routinely impeded delivery of food and medicine to Gaza. We speak with Josh Paul, a former State Department official who resigned last October over the push to increase arms sales to Israel. He and Tariq Habash, who resigned in protest from the Education Department, have launched a lobbying organization and a political action committee called A New Policy to push for a new approach on Israel/Palestine amid what Paul calls a “deep-rooted and very entrenched” pro-Israel consensus in U.S. politics.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

A deliberate, man-made famine is underway in Gaza, according to many human rights experts. Starving Gaza is a new documentary by Al Jazeera English’s Fault Lines investigating how Israel has killed civilians seeking aid and attacked humanitarian networks. The harrowing film is based on the work of Palestinian reporters in Gaza who are suffering the same conditions as their subjects. “They’ve been displaced, they’ve been injured, they’ve watched their own children die in front of them, and yet they somehow conjure the professionalism to pick up a camera and record and tell other people’s trauma,” says journalist Hind Hassan. “They really will be remembered in history as the titans of journalists.”

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

Photograph Source: Al Jazeera English – CC BY-SA 2.0

Daily reports of Palestinians killed in Gaza focus on deaths from Israeli bombs and missiles, now exceeding 40,000.  Yet the famine stalking the Strip today threatens  the lives of many times that number. Already children in North Gaza are dying of malnutrition. Like canaries in coal mines, they signal mass starvation to come. Sadly, the major media has largely ignored the accelerating famine conditions in Gaza.

On June 25, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification Report (IPC) on Gaza  found that “96% of the population is facing acute food insecurity at crisis level (Category 3) or higher, with almost half a million people in catastrophic (Category 5) conditions.”  Partnering with experts from U.N. agencies, governments and major aid groups, the IPC applies scientific standards to evaluate food insecurity levels.   The  IPC observed that “many in Gaza go entire days and nights without eating.” The World Food Program said the IPC report “paints a stark picture of ongoing hunger.”

On October 9, 2023, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant declared “I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed. We are fighting human animals….”  On August 6, CNN quoted Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who said in a speech that “it may be just and moral” to starve 2 million Gaza residents until Israeli hostages are returned. While some, but grossly inadequate, amounts of food aid continue to enter Gaza, the continuing IDF attacks in north, central, and south regions restrict distribution efforts.

The Genocide Convention of 1948 includes as a genocidal act “Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.” This would seem to include the use of mass starvation as a war tactic, already recognized as a war crime. In January, the International Court of Justice (ICJ), responding to South African allegations that Israel has used starvation as a war tactic, found that the use of starvation against Gazans is a “plausible” violation of the Genocide Convention.

Meanwhile, Palestinians in Gaza are increasingly falling ill and dying from diseases that are abetted by malnutrition, a lack of clean water, unsanitary conditions, repeated evacuations and untreated war injuries. The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Assistance reported in June that 67% of Gaza’s water and sanitation system has now been destroyed. On July 24 the New York Times reported that hepatitis B has infected more than 100,000 Gazans and that other diseases, including polio, are now threatening fragile civilians.

As we saw with the 1981 Irish hunger strikers, proper health conditions and adequate hydration can delay death by starvation to sixty or more days.  In Gaza people who are severely weakened by malnutrition, will likely die much earlier from disease or exhaustion. Starvation begins with a skipped meal, followed by a prolonged period without food. The third and fatal stage occurs when all stored fats have been depleted and the body turns to muscle and bones as sources of energy.

Alex de Waal, a professor and head of the World Peace Foundation at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, is a leading scholar of famine.  His 2018 book entitled Mass Starvation, The History and Future of Famine, makes two important points: (1) that modern famines are caused by a political decision (not crop failure) which he terms “famine crime;” and (2) that the best way to fight famine is to combat the political leaders who made the decision to starve a population. In requesting arrest warrants against the Israeli Prime Minister and Defense Minister, the International Criminal Court (ICC) Prosecutor cited among the alleged war crimes “starvation of civilians as a method of warfare.”  According to de Waal, “A first-degree famine crime is committed by someone determined to exterminate a population through famine.” He notes that “mass atrocities” of famine “are closely associated with war, and ending war goes far in reducing” the starvation of civilians. He calls for tougher laws to criminalize mass starvation.

In Gaza today, it seems likely that famine will continue to spread and kill until there is a ceasefire. Given current political realities in Israel, a ceasefire is unlikely until the United States halts its recurring transfers of lethal weapons to the IDF.

The post The Starving of Gaza appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by L. Michael Hager.

The World Food Programme is warning northern Gaza has reached a “full-blown” famine that is spreading south. This comes after the Israeli military has spent months blocking the entry of vital aid into Gaza, attacking humanitarian aid convoys and opening fire on Palestinian civilians waiting to receive lifesaving aid. We get an update on conditions among the besieged and starving population of Gaza — including of children now suffering from the psychological effects of intense and prolonged trauma — from Dr. Walid Masoud, a vascular surgeon and a board member of the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund who is just back from heading a medical mission to Gaza.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

In its case against Israel, South Africa argued, citing various grounds, that Israel’s purposeful denial of humanitarian aid to Palestinians could fall within the UN Genocide Convention as “deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.”

A month has elapsed since the ICJ order, after which Israel was meant to report back on compliance.  But, as Amnesty International reports, Israel continues “to disregard its obligation as the occupying power to ensure the basic needs of Palestinians in Gaza are met.”

The organisation’s regional director for the Middle East and North Africa, Heba Morayef, gives a lashing summary of that conduct.  “Not only has Israel created one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world, but it is also displaying callous indifference to the fate of Gaza’s population by creating conditions which the ICJ has said placed them at imminent risk of genocide.”  Israel, Morayef continues to state, had “woefully failed to provide for Gazans’ basic needs” and had “been blocking and impeding the passage of sufficient aid into the Gaza strip, in particular to the north which is virtually inaccessible, in a clear show of contempt for the ICJ ruling and in flagrant violation of its obligation to prevent genocide.”

The humanitarian accounting on this score is grim.  Since the ICJ order, the number of aid trucks entering Gaza has precipitously declined.  Within three weeks, it had fallen by a third: an average of 146 a day were coming in three weeks prior; afterwards, the numbers had fallen to about 105.  Prior to the October 7 assault by Hamas, approximately 500 trucks were entering the strip on a daily basis.

The criminally paltry aid to the besieged Palestinians is even too much for some Israeli protest groups which have formed with one single issue in mind: preventing any aid from being sent into Gaza.  As a result, closures have taken place at Kerem Shalom due to protests and clashes with security forces.

Their support base may seem to be small and peppered by affiliates from the Israeli Religious Zionism party of Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, but an Israeli Democracy Institute poll conducted in February found that 68% of Jewish respondents opposed the transfer of humanitarian aid to the residents of Gaza.  Rachel Touitou of Tzav 9, a group formed in December with that express purpose in mind, stated her reasoning as such: “You cannot expect the country to fight its enemy and feed it at the same time.”

Hardly subtle, but usefully illustrative of the attitude best reflected by the blood curdling words of Israeli Defence Minister, Yoav Gallant, who declared during the campaign that his country’s armed forces were “fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly” in depriving them of electricity, food and fuel.

In December 2023, the UN Security Council passed a resolution demanding, among other things, that the warring parties “allow and facilitate the use of all available routes to and throughout the entire Gaza Strip, including border crossings”.  Direct routes were also to be prioritised.  To date, Israel has refused to permit aid through other crossings.

In February, the Global Nutrition Cluster reported that “the nutrition situation of women and children in Gaza is worsening everywhere, but especially in Northern Gaza where 1 in 6 children are acutely malnourished and an estimated 3% face the most severe form of wasting and require immediate treatment.”

The organisation’s report makes ugly reading.  Over 90% of children between 6 to 23 months along with pregnant and breastfeeding women face “severe food poverty”, with the food supplied being “of the lowest nutritional value and from two or fewer food groups.”  At least 90% of children under the age of 5 are burdened with one or more infectious diseases, while 70% have suffered from diarrhoea over the previous two weeks.  Safe and clean water, already a problem during the 16-year blockade, is now in even shorter supply, with 81% of households having access to less than one litre per person per day.

Reduced to such conditions of monumental and raw desperation, hellish scenes of Palestinians swarming around aid convoys were bound to manifest.  On February 29, Gaza City witnessed one such instance, along with a lethal response from Israeli troops.  In the ensuing violence, some 112 people were killed, adding to a Palestinian death toll that has already passed 30,000.  While admitting to opening fire on the crowd, the IDF did not miss a chance to paint their victims as disorderly savages, with “dozens” being “killed and injured from pushing, trampling and being run over by the trucks.”  The acting director of Al-Awda Hospital, Dr. Mohammed Salha, in noting the admission of some 161 wounded patients, suggested that gun fire had played its relevant role, given that most of those admitted suffered from gunshot wounds.

If Israel’s intention had been to demonstrate some good will in averting any insinuation that genocide was taking place, let alone a systematic policy of collective punishment against the Palestinian population, little evidence of it has been shown.  If anything, the suspicions voiced by South Africa and other critics aghast at the sheer ferocity of the campaign are starting to seem utter plausible in their horror.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Binoy Kampmark.

In Gaza City, at least 104 Palestinian refugees were killed Thursday when Israeli troops opened fire on a crowd waiting for food aid. “This isn’t the first time people have been shot at by Israeli forces while people have been trying to access food,” says the U.N.'s special rapporteur on the right to food, Michael Fakhri, who accuses Israel of the war crime of intentional starvation. This comes as reports grow of Palestinians resorting to animal feed and cactus leaves for sustenance and as experts warn of imminent agricultural collapse. “Every single person in Gaza is hungry,” says Fakhri, who emphasizes that famine in the modern context is a human-made catastrophe. “At this point I'm running out of words to be able to describe the horror of what’s happening and how vile the actions have been by Israel against the Palestinian civilians.”

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

Harrowingly, confoundingly, Gaza's horrors grow. Israel kills 250 people a day, attacks hospitals, bombs survivors in tents, blocks over 75% of humanitarian aid from reaching a place where "every single person is hungry," a quarter are starving, most are cold, 60,000 are maimed. At a beleaguered hospital, a visiting Canadian doctor just saw 15 amputations a day; he himself removed 10 eyeballs ruptured by shrapnel from children as young as two. As we watch, he mourns, "Humanity has failed these people."

By now the litany likely numbs, but still: To date, Gaza’s Ministry of Health estimates over 25,490 people have been killed, at least 10,000 of them children, and over 63,354 wounded, many permanently disabled. In the last 24 hours, at least 195 Palestinians were killed and 354 injured. Intent on "suffocating" Gaza's health system - after having razed hundreds of medical clinics, killed over 340 doctors or nurses, and left 350,000 ill patients without medication - Israeli forces have now encircled Khan Younis and are bombing areas around Nasser Hospital, the only major hospital still functionial in the south. Doctors Without Borders report a "catastrophic" situation: Wards packed with thousands of injured patients, hallways full of displaced, traumatized people, bullets striking inside the hospital, staff feeling the ground shake under heavy bombardment as debris falls on them from ceilings, shrapnel hitting the grounds and a sense of panic" made worse by the presence of Israeli tanks and forces blocking all exit routes.

The savagery goes on. Israeli troops also stormed smaller Al-Khair and Al-Amal Hospitals, run by the Palestinian Red Crescent Society, where they arrested medical staff and blocked ambulances from recovering bodies. Israel's project of "systematically obliterating" Gaza hasn't stopped with hospitals: They also destroyed 1000 of about 1200 mosques and recently blew up Israa University, Gaza's last surviving institution of higher learning, in their march toward cultural genocide. This week, they bombed displaced families living in tents in Al-Mawasi neighborhood outside Khan Younis, killing at least 40 and injuring more; they also bombed families sheltering in Al-Mawasi school and four other nearby sites housing up to 30,000 homeless people. So far they've somehow refrained from bombing the million Palestinians, half of Gaza's population, crammed into plastic tent camps in Rafah - a "pressure cooker environment (of) utter chaos, pervasive fear and anger (where) everyone is hungry and cold" - but give them time.

Other things "the most moral army in the world" has done: Fired on desperate, displaced people trying to bury their murdered relatives on hospital grounds or in any space they can find; dug up and vandalized graves in cemeteries, claiming to be looking for hostages; and with widespread famine imminent, fired on hundreds of starving civilians outside Gaza City who'd gathered to await U.N. trucks carrying food, killing and injuring a number of them. One father said he'd walked for 8 miles to find some food for his five hungry children; he survived, but didn't get any flour. With the genocidal rhetoric of Israel leaders inexorably oozing down to soldiers on the ground, troops have also filmed themselves gleefully plundering houses, smashing toys and setting fire to humanitarian supplies meant for desperate Gazans - who receive such an obscenely miniscule fraction of what's required to save lives that one UNICEF director likens the situation to "trying to drip assistance through a straw to meet an ocean of need."

One UN official says Israel this month has blocked 18 of 21 deliveries of food, medicine, water and other supplies to Northern Gaza. Others say it's turned back 22 of 29 aid convoys, denied access to 95% of fuel and medicine deliveries, and allowed in just 98 truckloads in three months vs. 500 trucks a day before Oct. 7. One expert warns Israel has so brutally used food, fuel and especially water as "weapons of war" that more Gazans could die of thirst and diseases from contaminated water than from military attacks, rendering Gaza, now more than ever, "the most dangerous place in the world to be a child." Meanwhile, despite proof of their charges, Israel lies: "Find someone that loves you as much as Israel loves lying." COGAT, the bureaucratic arm of the Occupation, insists there's no limit to aid getting in, or any other problem. "There is no hunger in Gaza, and for sure the population is not being starved,” said "Col. A." He helpfully added, "Don’t forget this is an Arab population whose DNA is to hoard, certainly when it comes to food."

Racist Israeli leaders offer the same blind denial on a Palestinian state - "The blood of our sons was not spilled so a terrorist state would be established" - and Netanyahu has repeatedly doubled down on Israeli control "over the entire area west of Jordan," aka "from the river to the sea." His genocidal intransigence persists despite Biden's sporadic, disingenuous "handwringing" about the devastation he somehow never acknowledges is wrought by billions in American arms; despite fiery Israeli protests - "Only Graveyards Will Be Named After Netanyahu"; despite analysis from even the Wall Street Journal that Israel has killed just 20-30% of Hamas' fighters and will never destroy even most of their tunnels; despite global condemnation and a lawsuit at the Hague. Still, confoundingly, infuriatingly, the U.S State Department, which has twice bypassed Congress to facilitate the slaughter and plans to continue, declares, "Our supprt for Israel remains ironclad." Oh grievous, bloody, complicit America. Wrong side of history, again.

And so we witness the awful, scorched-earth remains of "one of the most beautiful cities in the world," of a resilient people who even after years in an open-air prison sought "hope for a life that is worth living," but who now mourn, "There is nothing left here." Except, of course, suffering and unending loss. "I don't think people understand the human tragedy, the scope of it," laments Dr. Yasser Khan, a Canadian eye surgeon who just returned from an eight-day humanitarian mission, organized by WHO and NGO Rahma Worldwide, at European Hospital in Khan Younis. For the last 18 years, Khan has worked in 40 countries around the world. Gaza, his first active war zone, yielded the worst devastation ever: Drones humming, bombs dropping, mass chaos, screams, "the most gruesome injuries imaginable" - skull fractures, burn injuries, multiple limbs missing, eyes gouged, "shrapnel faces" - in a deluged hospital full of children shaking, starving, bleeding, blinded, in shock, everywhere: "That's what a war on civilians does."

European Hospital once held 250; it now tries to tend over 2,000 critical patients, along with 20,000 displaced people camped on floors and in halls under impromptu plastic shelters. Exhausted doctors sleep when they can in on-call rooms, as did Khan; they have all lost families, friends, homes. They work amidst incessant blasts; they've learned to identify drones, tanks, missiles. Without beds, most patients lie on the floor, in pain, getting infected, with respiratory and GI illness rampant: "Everyone has that Gaza cough." They arrive stunned, bloody, pulled from rubble, carried from explosions; doctors first focus on head injuries, missing limbs, other trauma damage. Khan saw many amputations - 15 on one day - usually without pain medication. Two teenage boys had massive injuries; doctors did an an above-groin amputation on one; both died, "but they tried." A woman caught in a blast was burned, with both arms fractured; she had both legs amputated. She'd lost her husband and three children; when she died; Khan thought it "a mercy."

After trauma cases, doctors turn to shrapnel faces - red dots with fragments of steel, wood, concrete from explosions that come too fast to cover the face - and, often, eyeballs. Skin can heal, notes Khan, but once a foreign object hits an eye, "it's basically gone." About 90% of those caught in blasts get eye injuries; Khan took out about 10 eyes - 6 in one day - all shattered by shrapnel. Many he removed from children - 2, 6, 11, 13, 16 years old - left blind or disfigured. The most difficult for him was a six-year-old girl, the same age as his daughter, named Aseel: "I saw this tiny soul sitting there...A piece of concrete shrapnel had lodged in her socket. I took the eye out...Her whole life has changed. What did she do to deserve that?" He also treated a two-year-old boy with cerebral palsy and no remaining family; he'd already had an eye removed, but the wound was infected. Above all, he says, "It's a war on children. And Israeli forces know this - that when a bomb's going to drop, children are going to die or get maimed or lose arms and legs and parents."

In the face of "a dehumanization (of) historic proportions," Khan says, Palestinians retain their humanity. At a hospital full of orphaned, injured, still-buoyant kids, adults who've lost everything vow to care for them like their own. Amidst the blood and chaos, depleted health care workers "treat each patient as the only patient, and do their best to save them, no matter how bad it is." Khan, meanwhile, will never again look at numbers - like 200 dead a day - without thinking of "each individual who died in front of me." And he agonizes over the fate of the many thousands "abandoned by the world, their whole civilzation destroyed...What will happen when this is over? It is unacceptable." We thank Dr. Nozhat Choudry, cousin to Dr. Khan, for reaching out to share his story. And we thank them both for their grace and heart, for their unwillingness to follow a mandate to "give life for life, eye for eye." "I pray for peace for both Israelis and Palestinians," Choudry wrote at the end of his last missive. "God bless you, Nozhat."

Aseel, 6, one of hundreds of Palestinian children who have lost their eyes in Israeli air strikes.Photo by Dr. Yasser Khan

Hungry displaced Gazans in Rafah await soup delivered by the U.N.Photo by Bashar Taleb /APA images

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Abby Zimet.

Human rights groups say Israel is using starvation as a weapon in the Gaza Strip as Israel severely restricts the delivery of humanitarian aid, medicine and food supplies to millions inside the besieged and bombed territory. In a new report,” Israeli human rights group B’Tselem lays out how Israel’s decision to cut off electricity, water and international humanitarian aid to Gaza after a 17-year blockade against the territory has led to a very quick collapse of infrastructure. “The things that impede this provision of food for people who are starving is a declared policy by Israel,” says Sarit Michaeli, B’Tselem international advocacy lead. “The Israeli government is at fault, is responsible for this, and this should lead to immediate international action.”

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

Although the army has been sent in to pick up the slack, the food crisis has grown dire in Ryanggang and Chagang provinces, which border China, a resident connected with rural economic planning in Ryanggang told Radio Free Asia’s Korean Service on condition of anonymity for security reasons.

North Korea is chronically short of food each year. But a drought last year that ruined potato and corn harvests, combined with the lack of imports from China due to a prolonged border closure during the COVID-19 pandemic, has made the situation worse, the economic planner said.

Steps the government took to cope with the pandemic may also be contributing to the shortage.

Most farms in North Korea are collective ventures, where workers in a region cooperate to plant and harvest food, which is then shared among the communities.

But last year, the government distributed a plot of land to each family to cultivate so that they would not come in contact with each other and potentially spread the virus. This made worker attendance irrelevant from the authorities’ point of view, as each family worked their own plot.

“The current food crisis in the cooperative farms in Ryanggang and Chagang is so serious that it cannot be compared to 2022, the time of the coronavirus pandemic,” the economic planner said.  

Keeping people in line

Authorities are punishing administrative officials who cannot keep the minimum worker attendance rate of 60%, the planner said.

The Organization and Guidance Department of the Central Committee ordered that in the event that any workers at collective farms die of starvation, lower level administrative and party officials will be “severely punished,” another Ryanggang resident said.

A U.N. expert agrees that the crisis so far this year appears worse than the year before.

Currently, around 42% of the North Korean population is malnourished due to food shortages, Elizabeth Salmón, the UN special rapporteur for human rights in North Korea said in a report to the UN Human Rights Council.

North Korea will be short by about 800,000 tons of rice this year, a representative of South Korea’s National Intelligence Service, or NIS, said in a closed business report to the National Assembly Intelligence Committee in March.

Potatoes cost 2,000 won, or about 20 US cents, per kilogram (2.2 pounds) in the marketplace in Hyesan, Ryanggang province, the economic planner said. That’s the highest price since 2015, he said.

“It’s evidence that the food shortage of the residents in the northern mountainous area is serious,” she said.

Fleeing hardship

Living conditions are so bad that two desperate families this month fled the country on a fishing boat, crossing over into South Korean waters in the Yellow Sea, according to interviews conducted by the military and the NIS.

Fleeing North Korea on the high seas is relatively rare, as most escapees leave the country by crossing the border with China. The last such escape occurred in 2017, when five North Koreans fled to the South in waters east of the peninsula.

The South Korean military first spotted the fishing boat as it approached the disputed Northern Limit Line maritime border. When the boat crossed the line, the military boarded and confirmed the escapees’ intentions to flee to the South.    

They were then transferred to an investigation facility for interrogation and background checks. Once cleared, they will be admitted to a settlement support center for North Korean refugees, for about three months before joining South Korean society.

Two South Korean government agencies confirmed the incident to RFA. 

“It is a fact that North Koreans recently defected to South Korea, and a joint investigation [with the military] is underway,” a representative of the NIS told RFA. The two families consisted of fewer than 10 people and included children.(Dir. Park, is this correct?)

The two families are headed by millennial brothers according to The Korea Herald, one of South Korea’s major English-language newspapers.

Citing sources knowledgeable about the two brothers and their families, the report said that they decided to run to South Korea with their wives, children, and their mother because they sought a better life as portrayed on the South Korean TV shows they secretly watched over the years.

In particular, it was the talk show “Now on My Way to Meet You,” which features North Korean escapees adjusting to their new lives in the South, that prompted them to try to escape, they said in a screening interview with government officials.

In North Korea, they were the targets of discrimination because their late father who died several years ago had been rejected from joining the Korean Workers’ Party, which is the gateway to preferential jobs, education, social standing and better food rations, the report said.

The number of North Koreans escaping to South Korea was around 1,000 per year until 2019, but then dropped sharply during the pandemic to 229 in 2020, 63 in 2021 and 67 in 2022, , according to Ministry of Unification statistics. 

Potato shortage

Meanwhile, in the North, potato production was so low last year due to the drought that there may have only been enough potatoes for planting this season – not enough to use as food, said the first source.

Taehongdan county, which is known for its potato production, harvested only between 8 to 15 tons per jeongbo [2.45 acres] due to last year’s extreme drought, he said. 

“They need 8 tons of potatoes per jeongbo for sowing in the spring. So, in the worst case, they only grew enough to save for seeds.”

In an effort to avoid punishment, the cooperative farm managers are begging for food from rich people in their areas, the second resident said.

“They borrowed the food, promising that they would pay it back double in the fall, and distributed it to the farm workers to sustain their lives.”

Translated by Claire Shinyoung Oh Lee. Edited by Eugene Whong.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Sung Whui Moon and Do Hyung Han for RFA Korean.

The post Starving Ethiopia appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Nick Pemberton.

The acts of desperation are founded in part by the belief that orphanages receive supplies of food and medicine donated by the international community, despite Pyongyang’s restrictive COVID policies.

“On the morning of [Feb. 27], an employee of the orphanage in Pukchang county found a 2-year-old girl lying at the front door of the orphanage,” a resident of the county in South Pyongan province, north of Pyongyang, told RFA’s Korean Service.

“Women who are starving to death are secretly leaving their children … at night or in the early morning, and then they disappear with no trace,” said the source. “[They know] that the international community has been sending things like food, oil, and clothing to the orphanages over the years, so the kids will at least not starve.”

North Korea has suffered from chronic food shortages since the collapse of the Soviet Union in the 1990s. The food situation was made worse by the coronavirus pandemic, when North Korea and China closed their border and suspended all trade. 

Although rail freight has resumed, the food shortages are still worse than they were pre-pandemic.

Dwindling foreign aid

Foreign aid has declined. North Korea received about U.S.$40 million per year in aid between 2016 and 2020 according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs’ Financial Tracking Service. 

But COVID-19 policies that rejected outside help meant that aid decreased sharply to $14 million in 2021 and further decreased to a mere $2.3 million in 2022.

While it is not known how much of the aid was going to orphanages each year, it is reasonable to assume that they are receiving less than they were pre-pandemic.

Pukchang county, which has a population of about 140,000 people has thus seen the small orphanage’s numbers swell to about 110 children, according to the source. 

Two orphanages in the same province, in the city of Sunchon, have seen babies appear on their doorsteps almost every week, a source there told RFA.

“In the Ryonpo neighborhood where I live, they turned a company’s recreation center into an orphanage back in 2012,” the second source said. “A few days ago, there was a 3-year-old boy found crying on their doorstep.”

The source said that a ban on local travel due to COVID-19 restrictions still in place has limited many people’s ability to earn money. 

Most families in North Korea must run side businesses because salaries for government-assigned jobs are not enough to live on. A large portion of side businesses involve buying imported goods in one location, then selling them at a higher price in another.

‘Taking photos of babies’ faces’

The resulting lack of income has meant that many have had to decrease their food intake, including families with children. 

“As more and more residents abandon their young children at the orphanage, the city authorities are taking pictures of the babies' faces and handing them over to the local safety departments to find the parents and send the babies back to their families,” the second source said.

Residents are however critical of the authorities, saying that they are not doing enough to solve the problem of people’s livelihoods to the point that people are willing to abandon their children.

Data on the number of orphaned children in North Korea is unclear, but the South Korea-based North Korean Refugees Human Rights Association estimated in 2020 that as many as 40,000 North Korean orphans had escaped the country and were living in China.

For those still in North Korea, life as an orphan is often spent performing forced labor for the state. RFA reported in November that many orphans were among a workforce of young people who state media said had “volunteered” to work in coal mines and rural farms.

The U.S. State Department accused North Korea of “the worst forms of child labor” in its report on human rights practices in the country for 2020.

Translated by Claire Shinyoung Oh Lee. Written in English by Eugene Whong. Edited by Malcolm Foster.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Hyemin Son for RFA Korean.

The Taliban seized power in Afghanistan in August 2021 and, in response, Europe, the United Arab Emirates and the United States froze the Afghan central bank's roughly $9 billion in foreign assets—$7 billion of which was under control of the United States.

The freezing of the assets plunged Afghanistan into a liquidity crisis, in which people are unable to access their cash and perform essential transactions.

Without access to these funds—alongside a lattice of sanctions, a decline in humanitarian aid and harsh political turmoil under Taliban rule—Afghanistan has been led into an economic collapse with a dramatic uptick in poverty; 6 million Afghans are facing the immediate risk of starvation. According to calculations from the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), a left-leaning think tank, U.S. sanctions on Afghanistan (including the freezing of these central bank assets) could kill more people than 20 years of U.S. war and occupation.

In September, the Biden administration placed half of the U.S.-controlled assets into a private foundation, trusteed by just four people, ​"to be used for the benefit of the people of Afghanistan while keeping them out of the hands of the Taliban and other malign actors," according to a joint statement from the departments of Treasury and State. 

But interviews with two of those four trustees reveal that no funds have yet been disbursed to help the Afghan people and there are no policies in place to do so immediately. One trustee underscored that it is unlikely the foundation will be a vehicle to quickly return the assets to Afghanistan's central bank while the Taliban is maintaining oppressive rule.

This lack of progress raises concerns that the Biden administration is on course to worsen the rapidly spiraling humanitarian crisis. ​"Who pays the price," asks Basir Bita, an Afghan activist who works with the Afghan refugee community in Canada and who has family in Afghanistan, ​"for the U.S. freezing the funds? The public. The people who live in Afghanistan."

The United States froze the Afghan central bank's assets amid public outcry over the U.S. military's withdrawal from Afghanistan. The Biden administration depicted the move as a refusal to legitimize Taliban rule. 

Yet, according to Andrés Arauz, a senior research fellow at the CEPR, ​"The reality is that central banks don't just hold government money—they also and mostly hold commercial banks' money. They are not only banks of governments; they are also banks of banks. It was important for the working of Afghanistan's financial system, and therefore its economy, that their banks have access to money that was seized by the United States." 

The freezing of the assets plunged Afghanistan into a liquidity crisis, in which people are unable to access their cash and perform essential transactions. Alongside the liquidity crisis is hyper-inflation, which has worsened the acute and widespread problem of hunger. Between June 2021 and July 2022, the price of wheat flour in Afghanistan skyrocketed 68% and cooking oil jumped 55%, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross. Seventy percent of homes are ​"unable to meet basic food and non-food needs," the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies warned in June. Reports have emerged of Afghans selling their daughters, and their kidneys, in an effort to survive hunger and rising debt.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Sarah Lazare.

NPR ran several stories on Afghanistan to mark the anniversary of the August 2021 US withdrawal, even sending host Steve Inskeep to the country to produce a series of pieces. His visit happened to coincide with Biden’s claimed assassination of Ayman al-Zawahiri; Inskeep says that he and his team were staying in close proximity to the Al Qaeda leader.

With the anniversary and assassination providing a renewed focus on Afghanistan, NPR could have used this opportunity to call attention to the US policy of starving Afghanistan by restricting its international trade activity and seizing its central banking reserves. Instead, it briefly mentioned the catastrophe only one time, devoting a mere 30 seconds to it over two weeks. The reserve theft was mentioned once as well, and for less than 10 seconds.

Over the course of the series, between August 5 and August 19, 2022, NPR‘s two flagship shows, Morning Edition and All Things Considered, aired 18 Afghanistan segments, amounting to some 114 minutes of coverage:

• We Visited a Taliban Leader’s Compound to Examine His Vision for Afghanistan (Morning Edition, 8/5/22; 11 minutes)
• Ackerman’s ‘Fifth Act’ Focuses on the Final Week of US Involvement in Afghanistan (Morning Edition, 8/5/22; 7 minutes)
• Kabul’s Fall to the Taliban, One Year Later (All Things Considered, 8/8/22; 8 minutes)
• Hamid Karzai Stays On in Afghanistan—Hoping for the Best, but Unable to Leave (Morning Edition, 8/8/22; 8 minutes)
• Inside a TV News Station Determined to Report Facts in the Taliban’s Afghanistan (All Things Considered, 8/8/22; 7 minutes)
• In Afghanistan, Why Are Some Women Permitted to Work While Others Are Not? (Morning Edition, 8/8/22; 6 minutes)
• A US Marine’s View at the Kabul Airport When the Taliban Took Over (All Things Considered, 8/10/22; 8 minutes)
• A Marine Who Helped Lead Afghanistan Evacuations Reflects on Those Left Behind (All Things Considered, 8/11/22; 8 minutes)
• What Remains of the American University of Afghanistan? (Morning Edition, 8/11/22; 4 minutes)
• After Decades of War, an Afghan Village Mourns Its Losses (All Things Considered, 8/12/22; 4 minutes)
• Remembering the Day the Taliban Took Control of Afghanistan (All Things Considered, 8/14/22; 5 minutes)
• Biden’s Approval Ratings Haven’t Recovered Since the US Withdrawal in Afghanistan (All Things Considered, 8/15/22; 4 minutes)
• After a Year of Taliban Rule, Many Afghans Are Struggling to Survive (All Things Considered, 8/15/22; 5 minutes)
• What did Afghans Gain—and Lose—in a Region That Supported the Taliban? (Morning Edition, 8/15/22; 7 minutes)
• A Year After the Taliban Seized Power, What Is Life Like in Afghanistan Now? (Morning Edition, 8/15/22; 4 minutes)
• An Afghan Opposition Leader Builds on His Father’s Efforts to Oust the Taliban (Morning Edition, 8/17/22; 7 minutes)
• A Year Later, Former Afghanistan Education Minister Reflects on Her Country (All Things Considered, 8/18/22; 8 minutes)
• Canada Is Criticized for Not Getting More Endangered Afghans Into the Country (Morning Edition, 8/19/22; 3 minutes)

NPR focused almost no attention on the hunger crisis and the US role in exacerbating it. The series instead focused on a question that’s important, but far less relevant to NPR‘s US audience: “Who is included in the New Afghanistan?”

FAIR (8/9/22) has already criticized the initial piece (8/5/22) for the historical framing NPR used to contextualize the current situation in Afghanistan. Host Steve Inskeep misleadingly said that the Taliban refused to turn over Al Qaeda’s Osama Bin Laden after 9/11, and this “led to the US attack.” In reality, the Taliban repeatedly offered to put Bin Laden on trial or give him up to a third country both before and after the attacks.

‘Tantamount to mass murder’

Afghanistan is currently enduring misery under the onslaught of drought, famine and economic collapse: 95% of Afghans don’t have enough to eat, while acute hunger has spread to half the population, an increase of 65% since last July. Conditions are so dire that some are being forced to boil grass to sustain themselves.

Throughout NPR’s series, which centers mostly on the “inclusivity” question, the dire toll on Afghan civilians was an afterthought. None of the above stats were mentioned on air, and there was little attempt to connect the Afghan plight to deliberate US policy.

Intercept (2/11/22): “The decision puts Biden on track to cause more death and destruction in Afghanistan than was caused by the 20 years of war that he ended.”

The omission is glaring, given the enormity of the Afghan crisis and the direct role the US plays in making it worse. The Intercept has covered the toll of sanctions over the years, even calling Biden’s policy “tantamount to mass murder” (2/11/22). This disaster is actually recognized by some of the establishment press. Even the New York Times editorial board (1/19/22) issued a plea to “let innocent Afghans have their money.” But this central fact fails to occupy central attention.

These events were set in motion almost immediately after the US withdrawal. Before its collapse, the US-backed Afghan government relied on foreign aid for most of its annual budget. After the overthrow, those funds were no longer available, since the US refused to deal with the Taliban.

While numerous human rights organizations called for an increased flow of aid, and warned of an impending humanitarian crisis, US policymakers decided to exacerbate the situation by freezing the Afghan’s central bank reserves, hamstringing the Afghan banking system, and thus the economy. $9 billion of reserves were inaccessible to the Taliban, an amount that equates to half of the entire economy’s GDP. As a result, the new government was unable to fund critical governmental infrastructure, including salaries for nurses and teachers.

At the US behest, the IMF froze about a half billion dollars in funds designated to help poor countries during the pandemic. Relatives living outside the country have been able to send far less money, as the traditional banking avenues have collapsed—leaving MoneyGram and Western Union as some of the only viable alternatives. Both services had temporarily halted services upon the Afghan government collapse. Since the Taliban is designated as an enemy of the US, many companies still avoid doing business in Afghanistan, further compounding the collapse.

Shortly after the withdrawal, the media often recognized these increasingly horrid conditions, but either decoupled them from US policy, or framed the oncoming crisis as “leverage” for the West to reshape the Afghan government.  The “hunger crisis,” wrote the Associated Press (9/1/21), “give[s] Western nations leverage as they push the group to fulfill a pledge to allow free travel, form an inclusive government and guarantee women’s rights.” Others took a similar line (New York Times, 9/1/21; Wall Street Journal, 8/23/21).

The economy has since fallen into a tailspin. The humanitarian aid the US still sends to Afghanistan does little to stop the economic free fall. By March, aid agencies were warning of “total collapse” if the economy wasn’t resuscitated, a prospect that has only grown more likely over the last few months.

‘A new US-backed free Afghanistan’

Morning Edition‘s  profile (8/8/22) of former Afghan President Hamid Karzai omits details found in a Washington Post report (12/9/19)—such as that he “won reelection after cronies stuffed thousands of ballot boxes,” and that “the CIA had delivered bags of cash to his office for years.” 

The only mention of the reserve theft was during Inskeep’s interview with former Afghan President Hamid Karzai (Morning Edition, 8/8/22). The interview started off with another instance of mythologizing history, similar to the previous misframing of the origins of the war (FAIR.org, 8/9/22). Inskeep told his audience that “Karzai once personified a new, US-backed free Afghanistan,” marveling at how his name remained on the international airport.

Inskeep’s lauding description of Karzai leaves out the massive, US-financed, heroin-fueled reign of corruption that was endemic to US occupation. Karzai himself stood at the center of it all, financed by CIA cash and retaining power through an openly stolen election that saw nearly a quarter of all votes cast later declared fraudulent. Such facts were well-documented, even by establishment press (notably the Washington Post—12/9/19—in the fourth part of its Afghanistan Papers series).

Inskeep was certainly aware of this endemic malfeasance, because he later acknowledged that the Afghan government was “discredited by corruption.” He didn’t let this tarnish the image he presented of Karzai, however.

It’s subtle erasures and omissions like this that define the process of rewriting history. When something as clear and well-documented as Karzai’s blatant corruption can be so easily swept under the rug, it’s obvious that the goal isn’t to give context to the audience.  Instead, we’re listening to mythmaking and historical revision in real time.

A willful omission

On air, Inskeep referenced Karzai’s call for the US to change its policy. Inskeep said: “He wants the US to return Afghan central bank funds, which it froze to keep the money away from the Taliban.” Karzai reiterated: “Americans should return Afghanistan’s reserves. The $7 billion. That does not belong to any government. They belong to the Afghan people.”

NPR (8/8/22) quoted from this Human Rights Watch report—but its message that “international economic restrictions are still driving the country’s catastrophe and hurting the Afghan people” does not seem to have sunk in.

Neither Inskeep nor Karzai stated or implied a causal relationship between the US actions and the hunger crisis; in fact, the hunger crisis wasn’t mentioned at all in the segment as it aired. In an online article based on the segment, NPR (8/8/22) wrote just two sentences:

Western aid has largely dried up, and the US froze some $7 billion of funds from Afghanistan’s central bank to keep it out of the Taliban’s hands. The economy has collapsed, and unemployment and food insecurity are widespread.

Here, the crisis is mentioned, but the causality is obscured. However, it’s clear that NPR is aware of the connection. The piece linked directly to a Human Rights Watch report (8/4/22) whose first sentence reads:

Afghanistan’s humanitarian crisis cannot be effectively addressed unless the United States and other governments ease restrictions on the country’s banking sector to facilitate legitimate economic activity and humanitarian aid.

Later in the article, HRW Asia advocacy director John Sifton said that “Afghanistan’s intensifying hunger and health crisis is urgent and at its root a banking crisis”:

Regardless of the Taliban’s status or credibility with outside governments, international economic restrictions are still driving the country’s catastrophe and hurting the Afghan people.

So NPR is aware of the US role in exacerbating the crisis, but decided that its listeners didn’t need to hear about it.

Covering malice with ‘apathy’ 

NPR Pakistan/Afghanistan correspondent Diaa Hadid.

The only actual discussion in the series of the humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan came on Morning Edition (8/15/22), and only consisted of 30 seconds, when Pakistan/Afghanistan correspondent Diaa Hadid said this:

Well, Leila, it’s been a year of hunger. Sanctions that were meant to punish Taliban leaders have battered the economy. They’ve plunged Afghanistan into a humanitarian catastrophe. More than 90% of Afghans don’t eat enough food. There’s not enough aid to go around. And you can see it on the streets. People are gaunt. Men, women and children plead for money. But the UN’s appeal to deal with this crisis is underfunded. And I’m reminded of something that a Human Rights Watch researcher said in a statement a few days ago. She said the Afghan people are living in a human rights nightmare; they are victims of both Taliban cruelty and international apathy.

Here NPR acknowledged that US sanctions “battered the economy,” and that they are responsible for “humanitarian catastrophe,” but claimed that they were “meant to punish Taliban leaders,” rather than the people of Afghanistan. Later Hadid cited a Human Rights Watch researcher attributing the suffering in part to “international apathy.”

This wording significantly downplays the deliberateness of the US economic war. There is no doubt that given the ample warnings about the oncoming catastrophe and hunger crisis, the US was aware that sanctions and freezing assets would only wreak havoc on the population. No serious journalist should take the US government at its word that its intentions were benevolent, especially when the evidence points in the opposite direction.

The rest of the series looked at the sensational days of the US military withdrawal, the stripping of rights from women under Taliban rule, and even how Afghanistan affects Biden’s approval ratings. NPR hosts continued to ask, “Who is included in the Taliban’s Afghanistan?” deploying the contemporary liberal ideal of inclusivity to criticize the Taliban. But when 95% of the population isn’t getting enough food, is “inclusivity” really the proper framework to analyze a country facing a historic famine deliberately exacerbated by the US?

Hadid’s mention of the crisis, along with Inskeep and Karzai’s mention of the central bank reserves, amount to less than 40 seconds over two weeks, in 18 segments that amount to over 100 minutes of coverage of Afghanistan.

A disoriented case

NPR (8/29/22) ran with this bizarrely glass-half-full headline: “In the Taliban’s Afghanistan, the Near-Broke Central Bank Somehow Still Functions.”

The Wednesday after the two-week nonstop coverage,  August 24, NPR’s Morning Edition (8/24/22) ran a segment headlined “Frozen Afghan Bank Reserves Contribute to the Country’s Economic Collapse.” Here Inskeep acknowledged that “the absence of the money has contributed to Afghanistan’s economic collapse.” He then replayed the snippet from Karzai about the need to return Afghanistan’s central bank reserves.

But even in that segment, the hunger crisis was only loosely connected to the US sanctions against the Afghan people.

Inskeep interviewed Shah Mehrabi, a member of Afghanistan’s central bank board under the US-backed government. Mehrabi, who has been living near Washington, DC, since the Afghan government collapse, in part endorsed Washington’s sanctions regime, saying that the US concerns about Taliban misuse of the funds were “legitimate.” In fact, Inskeep strangely noted that Mehrabi was “less upset about [the US freezing Afghan assets] than you might think.”

Mehrabi did note, somewhat indirectly,  that US sanctions were contributing to Afghanistan’s crises:

Isolation from international financial system will have to be ceased in one way or another to address the issue of poverty and mass starvation that this country is experiencing and will continue to experience, especially in the winter, harsh months that lies ahead and in front of us.

This brief mention, at the tail end of this six-minute piece, did little to raise important questions of US policy to the NPR audiences. A more coherent formulation of the problem would be that the US doesn’t want the Taliban to have the $7 billion, and is willing to starve the Afghan people for it. That can be gleaned from the piece, but only in a piecemeal fashion.

If we include the segment with the Afghanistan series, and if we (quite generously) say the whole segment is talking about the starving Afghans, then that means that NPR spent just seven minutes on the economic collapse and hunger crisis over three weeks, 19 segments and 120 minutes. Still shameful for one of the most pressing humanitarian catastrophes on Earth today.

On Monday, NPR (8/29/22) published an online text version of the August 24 segment under the confoundingly optimistic title, “In the Taliban’s Afghanistan, the Near-Broke Central Bank Somehow Still Functions.” The title choice is odd, given that Mehrabi explicitly stated that the bank’s current balances are “not adequate to be able to perform the necessary function of the central bank.”

If NPR cared about the Afghan people, its coverage would be aimed at informing listeners about how their country’s policies are dramatically hurting Afghans. US citizens may have differing opinions about these disastrous policies, but the facts need to be adequately discussed in the media. Instead, NPR’s coverage divorced the misery of Afghans from anything having to do with its audience, directing attention to the flaws in the Taliban rather than a violent US policy of deliberately starving the Afghan people.

ACTION ALERT: You can send a message to NPR‘s public editor here (or via Twitter: @NPRpubliceditor). Please remember that respectful communication is the most effective. Feel free to leave a copy of your message in the comments thread of this post.

The post NPR Devotes Almost Two Hours to Afghanistan Over Two Weeks—and 30 Seconds to US Starving Afghans appeared first on FAIR.

This content originally appeared on FAIR and was authored by Bryce Greene.

What can you say about governments that, in the midst of a global food crisis, choose instead to feed machines? You might say they were crazy, uncaring or cruel. But these words scarcely suffice when you seek to describe the burning of food while millions starve.

"If biofuel production ceased worldwide, according to one estimate, the saved crops could feed 1.9 billion human beings."

There's nothing complicated about the effects of turning crops into biofuel. If food is used to power cars or generate electricity or heat homes, either it must be snatched from human mouths, or ecosystems must be snatched from the planet's surface, as arable lands expand to accommodate the extra demand. But governments and the industries that they favor obscure this obvious truth. They distract and confuse us about an evidently false solution to climate breakdown.

From inception, the incentives and rules promoting biofuels on both sides of the Atlantic had little to do with saving the planet and everything to do with political expediency. Angela Merkel pushed for an EU biofuels mandate as a means of avoiding stronger fuel economy standards for German motor manufacturers. In the US, they have long been used to prop up the price of grain and provide farmers with a guaranteed market. That's why the Biden administration, as the midterm elections loom, remains committed to this cruelty.

As the investigative group Transport & Environment shows, the land used to grow the biofuels consumed in Europe covers 14m hectares (35m acres): an area larger than Greece. Of the soy oil consumed in the European Union, 32% is eaten by cars and trucks. They devour 50% of all the palm oil used in the EU and 58% of the rapeseed oil. Altogether, 18% of the world's vegetable oil is turned into biodiesel, and 10% of the world's grains are transformed into ethanol, to mix with petrol.

A new report by Green Alliance, an independent think tank, shows that the food used by the UK alone for biofuels could feed 3.5 million people. If biofuel production ceased worldwide, according to one estimate, the saved crops could feed 1.9 billion human beings. The only consistent and reliable outcome of this technology is hunger.

It's not just a matter of the upward pressure on food prices, great as this is. Biofuel markets also provide a major incentive for land grabbing from small farmers and indigenous people. Since 2000, 10m hectares of Africa's land, often the best land, has been bought or seized by sovereign wealth funds, corporations, and private investors. They replace food production for local people with "flex crops": commodities such as soya and maize that can be switched between markets for food, animal feed, or biofuel, depending on which prices are strongest. Land grabbing is a major cause of destitution and hunger.

As biofuels raise demand for land, rainforests, marshes, and savannahs in Indonesia, Malaysia, Brazil, and Africa are cleared. There's a limit to how much we can eat. There's no limit to how much we can burn.

All the major crop sources of biodiesel have a higher climate impact than the fossil fuels they replace. Rapeseed oil causes 1.2 times as much global heating, soy oil twice as much, palm oil three times. The same goes for ethanol made from wheat. Yet this consideration hasn't stopped the reopening of a bioethanol plant in Hull, in response to government incentives, which will use the wheat grown on 130,000 hectares of land.

Whenever a new biofuel market is launched, we are told it will run on waste. A recent example is BP's claim that planes will be fueled by "sustainable feedstocks such as used cooking oil and household waste." Invariably, as soon as the market develops, dedicated crops are grown to supply it. Already, all the waste that can realistically be extracted is being used, yet it accounts for just 17% of the EU's biodiesel and scarcely any bioethanol. Even these figures, according to an industry whistleblower who contacted me, are stretched: as waste palm oil, thanks to the demand for "green" biodiesel, can be more valuable than new oil, fresh supplies are allegedly slipped into the waste stream.

Far from heeding the concerns, however, last year the UK government, "responding to industry feedback", increased its target for the amount of biofuel used in surface transport. Worse, it justifies continued airport expansion with the claim that planes will soon be able to use "sustainable" fuels. In practice this means biofuel, as no other "sustainable" source is likely to power mass air travel in the medium term. But there is no means of flying more than a tiny number of planes on this fuel that does not involve both global starvation and ecological catastrophe.

Now the energy company Ecotricity has relaunched a plan to turn 6.4m hectares of the UK – over one-quarter of our land area – into feedstock for biogas plants. Ecotricity's founder, Dale Vince, has made the astonishing claim that "it's a plan with no downsides." But, as critics have been trying to point out to him, this scheme would incur enormous ecological, carbon, and food opportunity costs. In other words, the land could either be used for growing food; or, if it ceased to be used for food production, would draw down more carbon and harbor more wildlife if it were rewilded. Biogas production has also triggered severe pollution events, caused by spreading the residue back onto the land, which is a crucial part of Ecotricity's plan, or by leaks and ruptures. It's the worst land-use proposal I've ever seen in the UK.

When I challenged Vince about these issues, he told me: "We're not the big bad corporate. We're environmentalists that get things done, and often enough when we start something new we upset the settled view of things."

But we can't use such fixes to solve our climate crisis. To leave fossil fuels in the ground, we should change our energy system: our need to travel, our modes of transport, the fuel economy of our homes, and the means by which we heat them. Modern biofuels, used at scale, are no more sustainable than an older variety: whale oil. And burning food is the definition of decadence.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by George Monbiot.

This content originally appeared on The Intercept and was authored by Deconstructed.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by Pacific Media Watch.

The post Starving a People, Committing a Genocide: Biden’s Sanctions on Afghanistan appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Eve Ottenberg.