Ruling by Starvation

The Taliban, religious zealots trying to consolidate power in Afghanistan, have stooped to a barbarous low by starving civilians in an attempt to defeat their enemies. The Islamic fundamentalists have blocked supplies from reaching the central Afghanistan region of Hazarajat, home to their ethnic foes, the Hazara people. United Nations officials told The Times’ Dexter Filkins that the action of a government suppressing efforts to feed its own people is beyond the pale. Relief workers and starving farmers give accounts of having nothing but grass to eat and watching their children die of hunger.

Since the Taliban won control of about two-thirds of starkly beautiful, deeply impoverished Afghanistan several years ago, its leaders have turned their backs on the 20th century. They have forced women out of jobs and into garments that cover them from head to toe. Men are forbidden to shave. Children cannot play with marbles or fly kites.

A quarter-century ago, Afghanistan was slowly proceeding into the modern age. The capital, Kabul, was relatively cosmopolitan, but country dwellers lived on a largely barter economy and had little chance for schooling and a life expectancy around 40 years.

Then an echo of the “Great Game” crashed down on Afghanistan, the diplomatic and military struggle that pitted Russia against Britain in the 18th and 19th centuries for control of this land of towering mountains and proudly independent people. In 1978, Afghan communists seized power in a coup. The next year the Soviet army invaded, setting off a 10-year war against American-backed Islamic militias. Hundreds of thousands of Afghans were killed and millions became refugees in their own land. Kabul today is rubble. One of its major attractions, proudly pointed out by Taliban extremists, is the tree on which in 1996 they hanged their enemy, Najibullah, whom Moscow had placed in power.

Since the Taliban began battling for national control in 1995, conditions across Afghanistan have plummeted. The women who staffed schools and hospitals were ordered to their homes, shutting down both services. The Taliban insist they cannot let food get to Hazarajat because it might fall into the hands of the enemy Hazara army there. When the United Nations launched an airlift last year to bring food to the Hazara city of Bamian, Taliban planes bombed the runway and the U.N. shut down its operations.

Last month the Taliban leader agreed to the request of Washington’s U.N. ambassador, Bill Richardson, to end the blockade. But when Richardson’s plane left Kabul the blockade remained in force. What’s happening is a settling of old scores. The blockade enables the Taliban, most of them Pushtuns, the country’s major ethnic group, to suppress the Hazaras, the largest minority in Afghanistan. Hazaras have a different language and follow a different branch of Islam.

For now there is little choice for aid groups and outside governments but to push the Taliban to relent. Neighboring Pakistan, especially, should use its considerable influence to persuade the Taliban to see it gains nothing by starving the people with whom it shares a desolate land.