As U.S. Pulls Back, Fears Abound Over Toll on Afghan Economy:
While President Obama’s announcement of troop reductions is not expected to change much here right away, American and Afghan officials are already worrying about the impact of the eventual withdrawal of international forces on Afghanistan’s struggling economy.
Very little will happen immediately. “What’s going to be different 24 hours after the president’s speech? Nothing,” said a senior American official in Kabul.
Over the next three years, however, as the American military and civilian presence — and spending — decrease, thousands of jobs will end for Afghans who work at or around bases and under grants and contracts financed by the State Department and the United States Agency for International Development.
Afghans and American civilian and military planners fear that the country will fall into an economic abyss, sending some Afghans back into the insurgency and deepening the poverty of people throughout the country.
There are many poor countries around the world. In fact, if you normalize for population, there are certainly regions of South Asia nearly as bad off as Afghanistan, if not quite so extreme. Let’s face up to the reality that we don’t care much about Afghanistan as such, rather, we care about our own self-respect, pride, and don’t want to give up due to “sunk costs.” But the end is nigh.
The Muslim world makes a big show about is cultural unity or affinity, and even non-Muslims who were raised in a Muslim milieu like Zach constantly refer to the “ummah.” Let’s make it real. The Gulf states should let Afghans come and work in the Middle East, so they can lift up their families through remittances. Remittances are not a panacea in the long term, but they’re certainly better than relying on the teat of the American military-industrial complex.