We are excited to announce the Summer 2022 Claudia Jones Editorial Intern is Cygaelle “Cy” Bergado, a senior at Temple University majoring in Media Studies & Production. We asked Cy a few questions.
Tell us about yourself.
I am a Filipino-American organizer based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. My interests include fighting towards social justice, writing, video production and hanging out with my cat. I am ecstatic to be interning with Toward Freedom!
How would you describe your interest in journalism?
It has been rooted in me since I was a teenager; journalism pays duty to the people by informing us about important issues and events. Journalists provide information that help communities shape decisions—and by extension, organize. I’m proud to be in the journalism field.
What drew you to the Claudia Jones Editorial Internship?
Toward Freedom takes a grassroots perspective. I appreciated its diligence in bringing attention to human rights issues. It was very resonating to find TF‘s dedication towards anti-colonial struggles aligned with mine.
What do you hope to report on this summer?
This summer, I would like to report on the political tyranny of The Philippines. It is important to bring to light the human rights violations being committed there. I am looking to report on the fraudulent Philippine elections ridden with vote buying and voter disenfranchisement. These human rights violations are not anything new to the Filipino diaspora; as we have been colonized, militarized and oppressed by the governments of Spain, the United States, Japan and our own for thousands of years. I also hope to report on the struggle of the Filipino diaspora, from all around the globe, to fight back against these fascist empires.
Anything else you’d like to do while you’re at Toward Freedom?
I hope to strengthen my skills in writing, editing and fact-checking. I also am looking forward to meeting, collaborating with and finding solidarity with new comrades.
Editor’s Note: The following is the writer’s analysis.
Afghanistan is teetering on the brink of universal poverty. As much as 97 percent of the population is at risk of sinking below the poverty line unless a comprehensive response to the country’s multiple crises is launched, according to a September 9 report the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) released.
In his video message to the 21st Summit of the Council of Heads of State of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) that was held on September 17, Secretary-General of the United Nations António Guterres addressed the group:
“You come together at a pivotal time. Troubling developments in Afghanistan are causing profound political, economic, security and humanitarian challenges. The situation is rapidly evolving and unpredictable. But it is clear that the Afghan people want extreme poverty to be eradicated, jobs to become available, health and education services to be restored, and their lives and basic rights and freedoms to be protected. They want their country free of insecurity and terror.”
Two Factors for Economic Crisis
Guterres’ words carry enormous significance. The UNDP report, which analyzed four potential scenarios of escalating intensity and isolation, indicates that real GDP could contract by as much as 13.2 percent, leading to a nearly 25 percent increase in the poverty rate.
Two factors have caused Afghanistan’s economic freefall. First, even before the escalation of conflicts, a highly dysfunctional neoliberal kleptocracy—with limited writ over a narco state, dependent on foreign aid and rentier economics for its survival—was pillaging the country with the help of the United States and its European accomplices. The result: Cruelty and callousness became the mode of governance. COVID-19 devastated Afghan society: The coronavirus is believed to have infected millions, with the impact helping drive an increase in the poverty level from 38 percent in 2011 to an estimated 47 percent in 2020. At the beginning of 2021, as many as 14 million people could not obtain sufficient food, meaning more than one-third of the population of roughly 38 million was going hungry. Food insecurity is a result of constant droughts. Afghanistan is highly vulnerable to climate change, having witnessed a mean rise in temperature of 1.8° Celsius (or 35° Fahrenheit) since the middle of the 20th century, compared to a global average of 0.82° C (33.4° F). Droughts are likely to become an annual occurrence by 2030. A severe drought caused more internal displacement between 2017 and 2018 than the conflict itself. The country now is suffering from another prolonged dry period.
The second factor that caused Afghanistan’s economic freefall is, since the Taliban takeover, the imperialist bloc led by the United States has forced Afghanistan into economic isolation. The World Bank has halted funding for new projects, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has suspended payments to Afghanistan and the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden has frozen the assets of Afghanistan’s central bank, which are held in the United States. Thus, Afghanistan has been faced with the absence of liquidity (cash), spiraling prices of food and medicine, currency depreciation, unemployment, and the collapse of services and construction. No money is available for public finance and administrative operations—that means no prospect of salaries for government workers. Eighty percent of Afghanistan’s last approved annual budget of $5.5 billion was funded by external aid.
Regional Shifts
UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Filippo Grandi—after concluding his three-day visit to Afghanistan on September 15—commented: “The humanitarian situation in Afghanistan remains desperate… if public services and the economy collapse, we will see even greater suffering, instability, and displacement both within and outside the country… The international community must therefore engage with Afghanistan—and quickly—in order to prevent a much bigger humanitarian crisis that will have not only regional, but global implications.”
The SCO countries have heeded Grandi’s advice. Instead of implementing measures that punish the Taliban in ways that exclude Afghanistan and adversely impact the country’s citizens, the organization is trying to actively promote a smooth transition in Kabul. In the latest SCO gathering in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, Central Asian countries—which had previously accepted their roles as mere doormats for U.S. ambitions in Afghanistan—voiced concerns about the bellicose attitude of Western countries toward Kabul.
“Considering the humanitarian situation, we propose looking into the possibility of lifting the freeze on Afghanistan’s accounts in foreign banks,” Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoev remarked.
Tajik President Emomali Rahmon, too, reiterated these viewpoints, adding “the entire burden of negative impacts” following the withdrawal of the United States from Afghanistan “will be placed on Afghanistan’s neighboring countries.”
Central Asian countries’ implied criticism of U.S. foreign policy is important. From the 2000s onward, the U.S. stance toward Central Asia was an extension of its war in Afghanistan. The region became a base for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and a conduit for International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) supply routes. Economic agendas were relegated to the back burner. A half-hearted attempt was made to create a regional energy market in Central Asia, Afghanistan and South Asia. With the Northern Distribution Network (NDN) as a starting point, the New Silk Road (NSR) was supposed to facilitate trade and transport corridors, ease customs and border procedures, and promote economic links.
Map depicting Northern Distribution Network’s routes that transported U.S. soldiers and military equipment to and out of Afghanistan / credit: Russian Council
However, these grandiose ideas were all for naught. Apart from profiteering from the ISAF bonanza and fleecing Afghanistan and its donors, Central Asian countries gained nothing substantial from U.S. initiatives. These benefits also came to an end with the decrease in the tempo of the Afghan war—beginning from the NATO drawdown in 2014 and ending with the U.S. exit in 2021. Failed regional cooperation, widespread corruption and disproportionate enrichment of elite insiders serve as relics of Western involvement in Central Asia.
China’s Role with Afghanistan
Growing disillusionment with the U.S. strategy on Afghanistan has pushed China—an SCO heavyweight—to the forefront of global diplomacy. For China, Afghanistan is not a passive unit in a geopolitical struggle against its rivals; it is a bridge between Eurasia and South Asia, and between East Asia and West Asia. It lies between two of the main Belt and Road corridors—the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor to the south and the China-Central Asia-Western Asia Economic Corridor to the north. Thus, Sino-Afghan ties are built on tangible geo-economic connections, not on opportunistic geo-political aims.
Map depicting the Belt and Road Initiative’s corridors / credit: Geopolitical Intelligence Services
On September 8, Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi announced $31 million in aid for Afghanistan, saying the funds were a “necessary step” to restore order and “end anarchy.” A week later, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian told reporters in Beijing the United States had no legitimate reasons to freeze Afghanistan’s assets. Asked about the Taliban’s demand that the United States should unfreeze Afghanistan’s assets, Zhao said: “I think that the [Taliban’] spokesperson is right.” He went on to say, “These assets belong to the Afghan people. They [United States] should respond to the legitimate requests of the Afghan people and stop the wrong practice of sanctions and stop making obstacles for Afghanistan’s peace and reconstruction.”
In his speech to the SCO Summit, Chinese President Xi Jinping provided the regional context to his country’s evolving Afghan plan:
“We SCO member states need to step up coordination, make full use of platforms such as the SCO-Afghanistan Contact Group and facilitate a smooth transition in Afghanistan. We need to encourage Afghanistan to put in place a broad-based and inclusive political framework, adopt prudent and moderate domestic and foreign policies, resolutely fight all forms of terrorism, live in amity with its neighbors and truly embark on a path of peace, stability and development.”
In a meeting convened on September 16, to discuss the situation in Afghanistan, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi proposed the following to his contemporaries in Russia, Iran and Pakistan: 1) the United States should be urged to provide economic and humanitarian assistance to Afghanistan; 2) the Taliban regime should be encouraged to make a clean break with terrorist forces; 3) concerted efforts should be made to moderate Afghanistan’s domestic and foreign policies and promote the basic rights of ethnic minorities, women and children; 4) pathways should be opened for the regional economic integration and development of Afghanistan; and 5) the spillovers of security risks should be systematically prevented. These five suggestions are sensible and should be supported by the international community to ensure stability in Afghanistan.
Yanis Iqbal is an independent researcher and freelance writer based in Aligarh, India, and can be contacted at [email protected].
Villagers in Mithiini, Kenya, in a meeting fellow villager James Mungai (first from left) chairs / credit: Shadrack Omuka
MITHIINI, Kenya—Families in a rural Kenyan village have been risking their lives spending most nights in the bushes with snakes and creeping insects to avoid beatings from a group dubbed “The Society.”
“Nobody will attack you in the bush as they will not know where you are,” said Sarah Kanini, who lives in Mithiini village in Murang’a County in central Kenya. The bushes look like a forest mainly consisting of acacia trees. “But in the house, they will just notice when you’re in and when you’re out. We live like wild animals and that is our life.”
Villagers said a private entity called the Mutidhi Housing Cooperative Society has been trying to evacuate the Mithiini families from land they inherited from their ancestors, who had retrieved it from European settler-colonizers. About 2,200 people have been squatting on this land.
Mithiini families lamented to Toward Freedom they have been attacked while struggling for the land since the 1960s. Making matters worse has been what they call a collaboration between government authorities and the Society. Land struggles between squatters and deed holders have continued unabated since Kenya’s 1963 independence from the British empire.
Mithiini squatter Sarah Kanini spends days and nights in the bushes to avoid encounters with a private entity looking to move squatters out of the Kenyan village / credit: BreakingKenyaNews.com
‘I Fear Sitting In My Own House’
Kanini built a house in the village using an aesthetically pleasing combination of varying soils, but she hasn’t been able to enjoy it.
“Even during the day, I cannot spend the time in the house because these people come without a notice,” Kanini told Toward Freedom, adding she was forced last year to bury her mother during odd hours. “I fear sitting in my own house.”
Villagers said the Society burns down houses, uproot plants and beats people. The perpetrators are said to still enjoy their freedom. Villagers provided the name of a senior police officer named Resbon Wafula, who they say collaborates with the Society. Wafula postponed meeting with Toward Freedom a few times. Eventually, this reporter could not reach him by phone. Meanwhile, when an area administrator realized he was speaking with a reporter, he cut off the phone conversation.
Squatters depend on mangoes as a cash crop. However, this reporter witnessed squatters’ trees have been cut down, and stumps either have been uprooted or killed permanently using special chemicals. Grass inside the squatter’s compound the cattle feed on reportedly have been sprayed with herbicide.
“One woman who was a vendor was preparing herself to go to the market,” Kanini said. “But, unfortunately, the attackers cornered her and burned her alive in her own hut—it was shocking.”
When this reporter reached out to area administrator Simon Kinuthia, he denied the issue, saying all squatter cases are taken seriously. He also said he would not comment because court cases are pending and investigations are being conducted. He directed this reporter to the deputy county commissioner, who did not answer his phone.
“Many people have been killed around here, but no action has been taken just because we’re squatters,” said James Mungai, a squatter and a grassroots representative of Defenders Coalition, a Kenya-based non-governmental organization that supports human-rights defenders, including squatters in Mithiini village. “But we’re wondering, even if we’re squatters, still we’re human beings and our rights have been protected by the law.”
Defenders Coalition Director Kamau Ngugi said the group has been working around the clock to ensure squatters’ human rights. However, he said who has the right to the land has remained unclear.
The hills of Murang’a County, Kenya / credit: COSV/CC
‘Fake’ Deeds and Court Orders
Villagers said the 7,600 acres remain under the name of a European settler named Tom Frazier, who left the country in 1976, leaving the land to the squatters’ ancestors. Some of their ancestors had lived in parts of the land even before Kenya’s independence in 1963.
For instance, Mungai said his mother died in 2015 at the age of 127, having lived on the land her whole life.
According to squatter Francis Kioko, the Society is using “fake” title deeds and “fake” court orders. The squatters have attempted to verify all of the documents the Society has put forth. They have found no basis for the land claims.
Mate Githua, chairperson of the Society, said the Kenyan government had sold the land to the society in 1964. He said a commission under then-president Daniel Moi provided documents stating the land belonged to the Society. After buying the land, Githua said it remained fallow.
“Some people from different areas of Murang’a and Machakos counties started coming in and later claimed that the land belongs to them,” Githua said.
He said the society began dividing the land among Society members in 1988. In 1999, all members were issued title deeds. As a consequence, he said the Society itself doesn’t own land anymore.
“If there is a land problem, then it is between the squatters and members who are now the owners of the land.”
However, Githua said the Society is awaiting a court order to evacuate all squatters from Mithiini.
He denied sending people to beat squatters, saying he had no reason to do that. He declined to disclose the names of the members, saying the Society is a private entity.
‘Only God Will Salvage Us’
For now, the squatters rely on human-rights groups and the media to air their grievances.
Both formerly European settled areas and community settled areas have been lost in the struggle.
Priscilla Wangoi, a squatter and a grassroots representative of Defenders Coalition, said she has visited the country’s highest agencies, such as the Director of Public Prosecution and the Independent Police Oversight Authority IPOA. She said the community awaits a reply from these offices, while this reporter could not reach anyone at the IPOA.
“Only God will salvage us, we’ve nowhere to go and this is the only place that we know as our home,” Kioko said. “We’ve nobody to complain to and we don’t know what they’re planning for us.”
Shadrack Omuka is a freelance journalist based in Kenya. He writes about human rights, climate change, business and education, among other topics. His work has appeared in several publications around the world, such as Equal Times, Financial Mail, New Internationalist, Earth Island and The Continent, among others.
On left: U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken with Rwandan President Paul Kagame. On right: Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni. Background: National Unity Platform presidential candidate Bobi Wine / photo illustration: Toward Freedom
SILVER SPRING, Maryland—The United States and its European allies only care about human-rights violations when it benefits them.
That’s what a few dozen members of the Horn of Africa and East Africa diaspora agreed upon as they gathered August 13 outside Washington, D.C.
A regional conference of the National Unity Platform, a political party in Uganda, brought together members of the country’s diaspora from the New York City and Washington metro areas to strategize on how to tackle U.S. meddling that props up leaders.
“The West wants to change regimes for itself, not for Africans—we remember Libya,” said Dr. Berhanu T. Taye, chair of the Global Ethiopian Advocacy Nexus (GLEAN) and member of the Ethiopian American Public Affairs Committee (AEPAC). He was referring to the 2011 U.S./NATO invasion that turned the most prosperous African country into a war zone that hosts slave markets.
‘Aid An Instrument of Western Neocolonialism’
While the conference’s theme was “Democracy & Security In East Africa & the Horn of Africa,” a series of protests the group staged the day prior was called, “No to Neo-Colonial African Dictators.”
Neocolonialism refers to the stage of colonialism in which a colonial power continues to control a country or a nation of people by supporting the rise to leadership of those within the oppressed nation who serve the colonial master. This continues the process of extracting material wealth for the benefit of the colonial powers. Loan programs through the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank are seen as tools to subjugate and profit off oppressed countries.
Taye referred to Western aid as “opium.” He encouraged conference attendees to get better organized for the struggle. “Aid is not only an instrument of Western neocolonialism, but of underdevelopment.”
The party’s regional conference included attendees and speakers from countries outside East Africa and the Horn of Africa, including Chad, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone and Guinea Bissau.
The Horn of Africa highlighted in yellow / credit: Wikimedia
Some party members and attendees from other countries expressed frustration with non-governmental organizations and the U.S. government not taking their concerns seriously.
“The likes of [Ugandan President Yoweri] Museveni and [Rwandan President Paul] Kagame… would not be able to do what they do without the backing of the United States and the United Kingdom,” said Maurice Carney, who spoke remotely to the audience via Zoom. Carney is founder and executive director of U.S.-based nonprofit organization Friends of the Congo.
Among the violations the group denounced were Museveni’s government being partly responsible for destabilizing the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) by sending arms and proxy fighters.
Meeting notes from an August 8 convening of the United Nations Security Council show officials pointing out the Ugandan government’s support for a Daesh affiliate group.
The violence in the DRC has internally displaced 5.6 million Congolese, while 990,000 take shelter across the African continent. In February, the International Court of Justice ordered Uganda to pay $325 million in reparations to the DRC.
‘Billions Go Out the Back Door’
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s International Trade Administration encourages U.S. companies to do business in the DRC, citing “tens of trillions of dollars” in mineral wealth.
“The DRC is one of the most blessed places on Earth,” said Taye. “Sadly, the agents in the neighborhood—Kagame and Museveni—are facilitating the looting of Congo for the West.”
Non-governmental organization Global Witness reported in April that 90 percent of minerals coming out of one DRC mining area were shown to have come from mines that did not meet security and human-rights standards. Companies relying on minerals from such mines include U.S.-based Apple, Intel and Tesla.
“Aid that comes in the front door with tens of millions of dollars is a mirage,” Carney said. The United States has disbursed $618 billion in aid to Uganda since 2001. “Billions go out the back door in the form of extractions [of resources].”
‘Africa Is Going to Be Punished’
Conference moderator Joseph Senyonjo said the NUPUSA (the party’s U.S. arm) has attempted to engage U.S. Representative Karen Bass (D-CA), chair of the Subcommittee on Africa, Global Health, Global Human Rights and International Organizations in the House Committee on Foreign Affairs.
“She has done nothing,” he said.
Senyonjo added Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-NY) has been unhelpful. Meeks chairs the House Committee on Foreign Affairs and has introduced a U.S. House bill that would punish African countries for bypassing U.S. sanctions on Russia. U.S. Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield said in an August 5 speech in Ghana that U.S. sanctions are not to blame for the global wheat shortage, all while threatening action if African countries buy Russian fossil fuels. However, cutting off Russia from the SWIFT global payments system prevents it from trading wheat, a major Russian export.
What does that mean for African countries that have relied on Russia for 32 percent of their wheat imports?
“Africa is going to be punished,” Senyonjo told conference attendees.
“Internationalism is the Achilles’ heel of U.S. imperialism,” said Netfa Freeman, keynote speaker at the August 13 regional conference of the National Unity Platform (Uganda) held outside Washington, D.C. / credit: Julie Varughese
‘We Can’t Be Timid’
Netfa Freeman, the keynote speaker, warned attendees of approaching the U.S. government from a weak position and with the intent of appealing to the conscience. He said the United States cannot recognize human rights because it was built by violating the human rights of the Indigenous peoples and enslaved Africans. Now, it holds one-fifth of the world’s prisoners, including the longest-held political prisoners in the world.
“Convincing them cannot be the goal,” said Freeman, an organizer with Pan-African Community Action, a grassroots organization based in southeast Washington. He also is a member of the Black Alliance for Peace Coordinating Committee and hosts a local radio program.
Freeman added officials such as Thomas-Greenfield, U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris and U.S. Secretary of Defense Austin Lloyd mirror the comprador class that holds power in various African countries. A comprador appears to independently operate as a leader, but answers to colonial powers.
Freeman encouraged conference attendees to widen the scope of their solidarity to include Afro-descendants in Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela, for example, because they, too, suffer under U.S. sanctions and threats of invasion. He connected events that took place during the same timeframe on the continent—the assassination of DRC Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba and the driving into exile of Ghanian Prime Minister and President Kwame Nkrumah—with the assassinations of Malcolm X and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
“Internationalism is the Achilles’ heel of U.S. imperialism,” Freeman said.
Freeman added the struggle must be waged against the system, not against individual leaders.
“We can’t be timid. We don’t ask for anything. We demand.”
