Nearly nine in 10 Afghans are starving and more than 80 percent have lost access to healthcare since America’s chaotic withdrawal allowed the Taliban to return to power in 2021.
American troops were hauled out of the country in September 2021 after the 20-year conflict in a move universally criticized as disastrous. Approval ratings for President Joe Biden sank and never recovered throughout his tenure.
The withdrawal saw a terror attack that killed 13 Americans, the fall of the Afghan government, and the resurgence of the fundamentalist Taliban, plunging the country into an economic and humanitarian crisis.
All of the aid the US and allies were giving to the country stopped, including development aid, which covered about 78 percent of the country’s expenses. This left the country in financial ruin.
Now, a recent survey by researchers at Lawrence Technical University in the US reported nearly 90 percent of Afghans are going hungry, 84 percent have no access to healthcare, and 85 percent receive threats of violence, more than three years after the withdrawal.
In the survey, participants’ comments emphasized limited access to humanitarian aid, restrictions on freedom of speech and women’s rights, widespread malnutrition, and significant levels of unemployment.
The researchers said: ‘The bleak conditions in the country have worsened in such a way that nearly everyone irrespective of their background appears to be negatively affected.’
They added: ‘The aftermath of the US military withdrawal may have been so profound that structural factors like gender and age, which once allowed young men to thrive while women and other lower-status groups faced more difficulties, appear to have lost their previous significance.’
The charts shows diminished quality of life factors, including poverty and loss of access to healthcare, following the resurgence of the Taliban in 2021
President Joe Biden, shown while announcing the US withdrawal from Afghanistan in April 2021, has since been criticized sharply for setting the stage for the resurgence of the Taliban and the ensuing humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan
The survey included 800 Afghans. Almost half were 18 to 29 years old and 94 percent were men.
The survey included multiple choice questions pertaining to mental and social stress, quality of life and open-ended questions where people could elaborate on their answers.
In addition to the large majority experiencing food insecurity, limited or no access to healthcare, and threats of violence, 72 percent of people said one or more loved ones had been killed or displaced since the US withdrawal.
The researchers said: ‘This research validates many of the concerns of the humanitarian crisis on the ground, as well as provides insight into how political shifts have resulted in socio-economic hardships affecting Afghans who remained in country after the 2021 U.S. withdrawal.’
Nearly 90 percent of Afghans are going hungry, 84 percent have no access to healthcare, and 85 percent receive threats of violence
Eighty-four percent had infrequent contact with family and friends while 85 percent experienced threats of violence. Nearly 72 percent lost at least one or more family members (killed or displaced) since the American withdrawal
Approximately nine in 10 Afghans maintain a diminished quality of life linked with high levels of social and psychological stress.
The authors said: ‘Adults often suffer emotional and physical pain caused by disruptions in facing chronic poverty and violence, particularly in conflicts.
‘Diminished social life conditions causes a sense of hurting, which becomes part of one’s social experience’
Stress levels are also high, with a score of 12.23 out of a possible 21. The main stressors cited were anxiety, hunger, and poor sleep as well as threats of violence
One survey respondent said: ‘The current situation in Afghanistan is disastrous and economically unusual because there are no jobs, all government jobs are taken by the Taliban, and the private sector has no absorption capacity.
‘The Taliban are armed in the city. They do not know whether they are thieves or responsible.’
The report was published in the journal PLOS Mental Health.
While the UN estimates around half of Afghans live in poverty, another report says 85 percent of Afghans live on less than a dollar a day.
120,000 people were airlifted out, while the rest became subject to the speedy resurgence of the Taliban
US-bound aircraft were overrun with Afghans who didn’t qualify as American citizens, citizens of allied countries, and Afghan supporters of allied forces like interpreters and contractors
President Biden announced in April 2021 that his administration would be ending ‘America’s longest war’ by September 11, 2021 – nearly 20 years after the terror attacks that plunged the US into war in the first place – after reaching an agreement with the group in 2020.
This promised a full withdrawal in exchange for commitments to a ceasefire and preventing the country from being used by terror groups like al-Qaeda.
By August that year, the government in Kabul had collapsed. Taliban fighters overran the capital and took over the presidential palace hours after President Ghani left the country.
But according to Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, the agreement weakened Afghan forces.
He said: ‘We did not anticipate the snowball effect caused by the deals that Taliban commanders struck with local leaders in the wake of the Doha Agreement, that the Doha Agreement itself had a demoralizing effect on Afghan soldiers, and that we failed to fully grasp that there was only so much for which — and for whom — many of the Afghan forces would fight.’
Further alienating President Biden from already wary voters, 13 American service members were killed and at least 18 were injured in an attack at a checkpoint outside of the Kabul airport, where thousands of people were being evacuated.
The United Nations said in 2022 that the governing Taliban, made up of factions of insurgents and hardliners, maintains a close relationship to the terrorist group al-Qaeda, which uses Taliban-controlled Afghanistan as a ‘friendly environment to raise money, recruit, and train.’
