Fieldnotes on Humanity

In response to my previous blog post about the crises at the Afghanistan Embassy in Washington DC, I received the following e-mail from the Afghan embassy. For further transparency, I am going to copy and paste it here. The purpose of my previous blog post was to highlight the misery and injustice that the US brought on the people of Afghanistan not only inside but also outside. I have spoken to a few Afghan diplomats, they are struggling to survive as their country is handed over by the United States to a criminal ethno-religio-fascist group, the Taliban. Anyway, the following email is indicating that I got a few facts wrong. This post is for that purpose.   Embassy Admin   < *******@afghanembassy.us > Dear Fekrat, We are writing to inform you that the information contained in your blog post published today, supposedly provided by our diplomats, are false. In this regard, we would like to clarify the following. 1.        We are not to...

Afghanistan's flag flutters outside the Afghanistan embassy in Washington, DC. (Photo  Source ) The collapse of Afghanistan's government was a catastrophic event for all Afghans, but for perhaps no one more so than for staff of Afghanistan’s diplomatic missions in the United States whose employees are not only distressed financially but also oppressed politically. For months now, Afghan diplomats and staff have not received their salaries and recently, the U.S. State Department has pressured them to limit their diplomatic activities and asked them not to speak to the media. After the sudden fall of Kabul to the Taliban on August 15, the US decided to freeze nearly $9.5 billion in assets belonging to the Afghan central bank. In addition, it froze all accounts belonging to the Afghan government, including those belonging to Afghanistan's diplomatic missions, its embassy in Washington D.C. and consulates in New York and Los Angeles. The Afghanistan embassy recently shut its co...