Pub­lished in the State Press on Sep­tem­ber 14, 2005.

The pres­i­dent of Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai, pledged $100,000 dol­lars on behalf of his coun­try for Hur­ri­cane Kat­rina dis­as­ter relief last week — an impres­sive num­ber from a coun­try cur­rently $8 bil­lion in debt.

The con­tri­bu­tion is even more impres­sive when one con­sid­ers a teacher’s annual salary in Afghanistan (which inci­den­tally has one of the low­est lit­er­acy rates in the world) is only $600.

Afghanistan’s Amer­i­can ambas­sador responded to the ges­ture by prais­ing Afghanistan’s “com­pas­sion and gen­eros­ity.” Given the con­sis­tently unmet needs of the Afghani peo­ple, how­ever, per­haps that com­pas­sion and gen­eros­ity is a tad misplaced.

The 53 per­cent of Afghans liv­ing below the poverty line could cer­tainly ben­e­fit from such com­pas­sion and gen­eros­ity, as could the hun­dreds of thou­sands of Afghans dis­placed by bom­bard­ment and war­fare — forces just as dev­as­tat­ing as a hurricane.

That’s not to say the coun­try hasn’t been struck by its fair share of nat­ural disasters.

The U.N. reports that, in the last six years, an earth­quake killed 1000 peo­ple, and dis­as­trous flood­ing fol­lowed a drought affect­ing mil­lions. And to top it off, there are still those pesky social prob­lems — acid burn­ings, rape and the ever-prevalent forced marriages.

So, how can a coun­try pro­vide relief for the dis­as­ters of Afghans when, accord­ing to the U.N., it gen­er­ates less than half as much rev­enue as it spends and is donat­ing $100,000 to aid the rich­est coun­try in the world?

Maybe Karzai fig­ures we’ll be giv­ing it back in no time anyway.

The dona­tion, iron­i­cally made on behalf of the starv­ing Afghan peo­ple, has received some crit­i­cism. The Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Afghan Women’s Asso­ci­a­tion (RAWA) responded to Karzai’s actions on its Web site, stat­ing, “While hun­dreds of thou­sands of Afghans are fac­ing star­va­tion … and Mr. Karzai and his gov­ern­ment fre­quently call for help from other coun­tries, this kind of dona­tion is worth laugh­ing [at].”

But, with the scant amount of media cov­er­age Afghanistan receives, it’s prob­a­bly pretty easy to indulge in the fan­tasy that Afghanistan, after the Tal­iban, is Eden with active landmines.

Human­i­tar­ian orga­ni­za­tions repeat­edly report on the lack of improve­ment in Afghanistan. But the ongo­ing suf­fer­ing of the Afghan peo­ple is too old to be news and too invis­i­ble to be history.

If noth­ing else, Karzai’s dona­tion (whether hypocrisy or a ges­ture of good will) should remind us of our own respon­si­bil­ity to a nation whose fate was irrev­o­ca­bly altered in our name, if not by our own decree.

The num­ber of Afghan civil­ians killed, injured and oth­er­wise affected by U.S. involve­ment in Afghanistan, both before the Taliban’s rise and after its fall, is com­pa­ra­ble to the dev­as­tat­ing effects of a Kat­rina or a tsunami.

So when you make your $10, $50 or $100 con­tri­bu­tion to the Red Cross for Hur­ri­cane Kat­rina relief, send another $20 to the women of RAWA. They’ll use it to buy school sup­plies for about 100 kids. And if you’re really feel­ing gen­er­ous, throw in another five, you know, for food.

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