The latest reports on the emergency situations in Afghanistan and Haiti cry out for support action, and at the same time show that international collaboration on responding to extreme human needs at any one place and time, is what will assure the future for all humanity.
This was brought out in the remarks by Schiller Institute President Helga Zepp-LaRouche Sept. 30, at the international conference, “The Road from War To Peace,” held by the U.S.-based Grand National Movement for Afghanistan and the Council of Global Relations, when she participated in the virtual event, along with over 25 American, European and Afghan citizens, to discuss measures necessary to achieve the goal of a peaceful and prosperous future for Afghanistan and the region, after 40 years of warfare. She gave an impassioned call for emergency measures to prevent the looming starvation of millions of Afghans due to the destruction of their economy over the years of war, and due to the refusal of the UN and European Union to meet their moral obligation to save the population from the destruction they had wrought. She called for support for Pino Arlacchi, who, as the Executive Director of the UN Drug Control and Crime Prevention Office, had negotiated with the Taliban in the late 1990s, to end opium production in Afghanistan, to be appointed as the representative to oversee the international backing for the development of that nation now.
On Sept. 28, the first major shipment of humanitarian aid arrived in Kabul from China; the material included medicines, blankets and other protective supplies for the winter. Food is urgently needed. More than 75% of the population is not eating enough, tweeted David Beasley, World Food Program Executive Director, yesterday, who said that the WFP survey showed that this many are “borrowing” food, and often going without. Winter is coming; people cannot survive; he called for help. Speaking from Kabul Sept. 30, on a four-day visit, the Asia Pacific Director of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) Alexander Matheou gave a detailed account. He said that part of the Red Crescent activity is delivering “emergency relief and recovery assistance to 560,000 people in 16 provinces worst affected by severe drought and displacement.” He called for ramping up all kinds of support, appealing for 36 million Swiss francs, explaining that the IFRC will use the aid for provision of water, more drought-resistant crops for the near term, rescuing livestock, and “supporting income generation for those most at risk of spiralling poverty, including women and the elderly.” With severe food shortages and COVID-19, overall, “Some 18 million Afghans are in urgent need of humanitarian assistance.”
In Haiti, the situation is desperate. Four UN agencies yesterday appealed to the U.S. to discontinue expelling any more refugees to Haiti. Since Sept. 19, the U.S. has sent some 4,600 Haitian migrants on 43 flights from the U.S.-Mexico border area, back to Haiti. Mexico has sent two planes. At the same time, in the Caribbean, authorities in the Bahamas and Cuba report interdicting Haitians fleeing their homeland, trying to reach Florida. Today, a U.S. apology to Haiti was given by Juan Gonzalez, the U.S. National Security Council Senior Director for the Western Hemisphere, who is in Port-au-Prince for a two-day official visit. Speaking of the treatment of Haitians in Del Rio, Texas, he said, “I want to say that it was an injustice, that it was wrong.”
But Del Rio is one instance of a standing policy of enforced poverty and cruelty—often of deliberate inaction—that has reached terrible proportions. As of 2020, there were “281 million international migrants in the world, which equates to 3.6% of the global population,” according to the UN International Migration Organization.
What is required in Haiti is massive emergency aid, as military engineers know how to provide, and launching rebuilding as laid out in the newly-issued, “Schiller Institute Plan To Develop Haiti.” In August, the Schiller Institute released overview plans for what is required in Afghanistan. The additional dimension involved, is that moving on these emergencies puts a focus on how to collaborate among nations, to intervene to stop the worldwide chain reactions of economic breakdown now gathering speed in the Trans-Atlantic. Just to identify the most obvious: There are energy shortages resulting from anti-fossil fuel, green madness, plus deregulated energy and commodity markets; there are food shortages, transportation disruptions, a sweeping lack of healthcare and other basic infrastructure, and throughout, the pandemic continues, with threat of new variants and breakouts. None of this needs to continue, if emergency measures are taken—for reorganizing banking, building infrastructure, and advancing science, and more— as laid out fully by Lyndon LaRouche, against just this contingency.
Helga Zepp-LaRouche, concluded her prepared statement for the Sept. 30 “Road from War to Peace” on Afghanistan, by drawing out the full implications for a new paradigm for humanity: "The Committee of the Coincidence of Opposites is mobilizing presently to get the U.S. and European nations to join hands with Afghanistan’s neighboring countries to solve both the urgent humanitarian catastrophe as well as the real economic development of Afghanistan and the entire region, which was once called the ‘Land of the Thousand Cities,’ which it can become again.
“If we succeed in doing that—and I am asking all of you to help in this effort—then the reconstruction of Afghanistan can become the beginning of a new paradigm in international relations and the beginning of a new era of mankind!”