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"The poverty in Afghanistan is almost beyond imagining. Thirty Afghans die from TB every day; life expectancy is 43 years; per capita income is $426; only 13% have access to sanitary drinking water; fewer than one in four are literate; access to electricity is among the lowest in the world. Conditions for women are brutal. If Obama plans to address these issues, he's pretty much keeping it secret..."
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Columbia University economist Jeffrey D. Sachs, one of the foremost experts on extreme poverty in underdeveloped nations, says it is past time for the United States to end its war in Afghanistan, the world’s fifth poorest nation. In an interview with Nieman Watchdog in November, Sachs said the United States should reverse its priorities and fund major sustainable development programs, which would not only help reduce Afghanistan’s overwhelming poverty but would be a surer way to help achieve greater U.S. security.
As Sachs wrote last May in The Guardian newspaper of London, U.S. foreign policy:
“has failed in recent years mainly because the U.S. has relied on military force to address problems that demand development assistance and diplomacy. Young men become fighters in places such as Sudan, Somalia, Pakistan and Afghanistan because they lack gainful employment. Extreme ideologies influence people when they can’t feed their families, and when lack of access to family planning leads to an unwanted population explosion.”
This applies particularly to Afghanistan and the neighboring provinces of Pakistan, which “are impoverished regions, with vast unemployment, bulging youth populations, prolonged droughts, widespread hunger and pervasive economic deprivation. It is easy for the Taliban and al-Qaida to mobilize fighters under such conditions.” With improved economic conditions, a major recruiting tool for the Taliban and al-Qaida – as well as extremists’ threats to the United States – would be substantially weakened.
Sachs was interviewed by Nieman Watchdog two weeks before President Obama’s speech Dec. 1 announcing a 30,000 troop increase in Afghanistan. Sachs noted that while the United States was already spending $60 billion a year for military operations in Afghanistan, it was spending only “$2 billion tops” for sustainable development programs there. The addition of 30,000 troops adds another $30 billion a year to the war’s costs, making the ratio of war spending to development even more imbalanced.
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Those figures, Sachs said, “must be turned around” in order for the United States to have any positive impact on the people of Afghanistan in the long run. However, Sachs said he had seen little to indicate that the Obama administration had any alternative strategy for specific development programs – such as investments in health, education, jobs, water, sanitation and irrigation – in Afghanistan and nearby Pakistan, where al-Qaida is actually based.
In his speech, Obama made no direct mention of Afghanistan’s extreme poverty or the link between poverty and extremism that can produce terrorists who might threaten the United States and other western countries. He spoke of no strategy for development programs, with his only mention of development aid a brief unspecific reference to agricultural assistance: “And we will also focus our assistance in areas – such as agriculture – that can make an immediate impact in the lives of the Afghan people.”
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