This week’s CODEPINK Congress was a very impactful report-back from the first civil society women’s delegation to Afghanistan since the fall of Kabul on August 15th, 2021. We were joined by Sunita Viswanath, cofounder of Women for Afghan Women; Ruth Messinger, President of Global Ambassador of American Jewish World Service; Kelly Campbell, co-founder of September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows; Daisy Khan of Women’s Islamic Initiative in Spirituality and Equality; and Medea Benjamin, co-founder of CODEPINK and Unfreeze Afghanistan.
These guests shared back about their trip to Afghanistan and what they saw, critically contextualizing the intense community needs they encountered such as hunger within the context of the U.S. and European banks freezing Afghanistan’s assets. The guests’ stories underlined the absolute importance of unfreezing these billions of dollars of Afghanistan assets. Kelly Campbell and Medea Benjamin discussed an amicus brief their groups recently filed, and Ruth Messinger urged us to put pressure on our elected officials and not give up.
As Kelly Campbell pointed out: “we spent $300 million per day on war for 20 years in Afghanistan. There is no excuse for us to be sitting on any of their money. There is no excuse for us not to be helping get their economy going again.”
Watch the recording of this CODEPINK Congress call here, and take action to tell Biden to unfreeze Afghan funds and provide more humanitarian aid here. You can donate to the effort to Unfreeze Afghanistan here.
