EIR LEAD EDITORIAL FOR THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 9, 2021

The LaRouche Alternative to the ‘Millennium Collapse’ of U.S.-NATO Policy in Afghanistan

Sept. 8 , 2021 (EIRNS)—“The failure of the policy of 20 years of war in Afghanistan, and the other interventionist wars,” Helga Zepp-LaRouche stated at the outset of her weekly webcast today,

“means that people must reflect on what a gigantic millennium defeat this is. The most powerful army in the world, the U.S. plus NATO, was there, and they were defeated by what? 65,000 Taliban fighters! That smashing defeat is something which has to be reflected on; and before some idiotic politician calls for a continuation of that war, they should think.”

Zepp-LaRouche elaborated on her Sept. 5 policy proposal, which is receiving wide international circulation, “Can ‘The West’ Learn? What Afghanistan Needs Now!”

“The only other approach is what I have been proposing in the context of the New Silk Road, the Eurasian Land-Bridge, of which Afghanistan must be an integral part. There has to be a serious effort to economically reconstruct the Afghan economy... especially starting with a real modern health system, because the pandemic is a huge problem, as is starvation.”

She continued:

“A serious effort by Europe and the U.S. to build a modern health system in Afghanistan is needed, because there is a need for it. And the pandemic will not go away, if you keep pockets where new mutations can develop. So it’s in the self interest of the West and everybody else to do that....

”If you withhold funds from Afghanistan, then you drive the Taliban into renewing the poppy production for opium. That would be devastating.... There must be a program by the West to help the Afghan farmers replace the opium production through modern agricultural production. That can be done.”

Zepp-LaRouche explained that back in 2000, Pino Arlacchi, at the time head of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime,

“was able to negotiate an agreement with the Taliban, whereby they eliminated opium production. My proposal, which is also backed by the Committee for the Coincidence of Opposites, therefore is that the Western countries, the EU, the U.S. should agree to nominate Pino Arlacchi to again be the negotiator for such an agreement to stop the opium production and coordinate the health system build-up in Afghanistan. He would be a perfect person for the job, because he obviously gained the trust of the Taliban at the time, to be able to accomplish such an agreement. He also spoke at two recent conferences of the Schiller Institute,” Zepp-LaRouche explained, “and he has extremely important insights. I think he would be an honest broker, and that is exactly what is needed at this point....

“Naming him would be a signal that the West is willing to cooperate with Russia, China, and the neighbors of Afghanistan in such a reconstruction program.

“Anybody who wants peace, to end the suffering of the population in Afghanistan,” Zepp-LaRouche concluded, “should agree and back such a proposal.”