Press Release
Afghanistan’s Children: Caught Between Slaughter and Starvation

On the 30^th November, at least 17 people were killed and 26 others injured in a bomb blast in a madrasa in Aybak, the capital of the Samangan province in northern Afghanistan. The majority of those killed are believed to be children aged 9-15. In the past 15 months, there have been several attacks on madrasas, including in Mazar-e-Sharif, Balkh and Kunduz provinces. This September, a bomber targeted female students in an education centre in Kabul, killing around 50 girls and young women and injuring dozens of others. The children of Afghanistan are also facing hunger and starvation due to a deepening economic crisis caused in large part by sanctions placed on the country by Western colonial powers following the Taliban take-over of the country last August. The aid-dependent country was cut off from international financial institutions, aid was suspended and $10 billion of its assets were frozen by the conscienceless American administration, causing huge financial hardship on the population. According to Save the Children, almost 10 million children in Afghanistan are going hungry every day and almost 50% of the population (19.7 million children and adults) need urgent support to survive. Public hospitals are overflowing with children suffering from severe acute malnutrition.

The children and youth of Afghanistan have known nothing but conflict and insecurity due to their land being savaged by decades of colonial interventions and wars that has decimated the country and left them constantly fearing for their lives. They either face senseless murder where they are killed in the process of learning their Deen, or a state of gnawing hunger and empty stomachs where they do not know when their next meal will come. The situation in Afghanistan exemplifies the consequence of economic dependence on foreign powers. Allah (swt) says:

[مَثَلُ الَّذِينَ اتَّخَذُوا مِنْ دُونِ اللَّهِ أَوْلِيَاءَ كَمَثَلِ الْعَنكَبُوتِ اتَّخَذَتْ بَيْتًا وَإِنَّ أَوْهَنَ الْبُيُوتِ لَبَيْتُ الْعَنْكَبُوتِ لَوْ كَانُوا يَعْلَمُونَ]

“Those who take helpers other than God can be compared to the spider which builds itself a cobweb. But the frailest of all structures is the house of the spider, if but they knew it.” [Al-Ankabut: 41]. It also illustrates the isolation, weakness and vulnerability that results from pursuing the nation-state ideal which prevents the resources and wealth of the Muslim lands being used to support Muslims who are in need due to regimes acting only upon selfish national political and economic interests. So, we see Qatar spending over $200 billion on the absurd World Cup, while the children of Afghanistan and elsewhere in the Muslim world starve to death. Isolation resulting from embracing the nation state philosophy also facilitates colonial governments’ manipulation of the politics of lands, through even employing hunger and starvation, or sowing destruction and chaos.

How many more years are the mothers and fathers of Afghanistan, Palestine, Yemen, Kashmir and elsewhere to bury their children slaughtered in senseless violence, conflicts and occupations. How much longer must they watch their children waste away in front of their eyes or die from preventable causes? Our Deen teaches us that strength, progress and security comes through unity. And such unity will never materialise without tearing down the Western imposed artificial national borders that divide our Muslim lands, and unifying under one leader, one state, and one system of the true Islamic leadership – the Khilafah (Caliphate) based upon the method of the Prophethood – that will implement Islam comprehensively upon the land. It is this state alone that will lift the darkness once and for all from the lives of the children of this Ummah. Allah (swt) says:

[وَعَدَ اللَّهُ الَّذِينَ آمَنُوا مِنكُمْ وَعَمِلُوا الصَّالِحَاتِ لَيَسْتَخْلِفَنَّهُم فِي الْأَرْضِ كَمَا اسْتَخْلَفَ الَّذِينَ مِن قَبْلِهِمْ وَلَيُمَكِّنَنَّ لَهُمْ دِينَهُمُ الَّذِي ارْتَضَى لَهُمْ وَلَيُبَدِّلَنَّهُم مِّن بَعْدِ خَوْفِهِمْ أَمْنًا يَعْبُدُونَنِي لَا يُشْرِكُونَ بِي شَيْئًا وَمَن كَفَرَ بَعْدَ ذَلِكَ فَأُوْلَئِكَ هُمُ الْفَاسِقُونَ]

“Allah has promised, to those among you who believe and work righteous deeds, that He will, of a surety, grant them in the land, inheritance (of power), as He granted it to those before them; that He will establish in authority their religion, the one which He has chosen for them; and that He will change (their state), after the fear in which they (lived), to one of security and peace: `They will worship Me (alone) and not associate aught with Me.' If any do reject Faith after this, they are rebellious and wicked.”[An-Nur: 55].

Dr. Nazreen Nawaz
Director of the Women’s Section in The Central Media Office of Hizb ut Tahrir