Fasting puts us in solidarity with those for whom hunger is an unrelenting condition

By Herbert Rothschild

We are now in the second week of Lent. That may mean little to most of my readers, but I grew up in New Orleans, a Catholic city. On Fridays, every school cafeteria served a meatless lunch, and on Ash Wednesday I would see many people walking around with ashes on their foreheads, even though, in the Gospel reading for that service, Jesus admonishes, “But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, so that it will not be obvious to others that you are fasting” (Matthew 6:17-18).

In the pre-Vatican II Roman Catholic Church, fasting during Lent was obligatory. The rules in the U.S. weren’t onerous: No meat on Ash Wednesday and the Fridays of Lent, the combined size of the two smaller meals no greater than the third, and no eating between meals. Nonetheless, I’m sorry they no longer must be followed. To experience hunger even for a few hours is to sympathize with our sisters and brothers for whom hunger is an unrelenting condition.

When I was a child with no knowledge of the wider world, starvation was an abstraction. That’s no longer true. And the people I call to mind this Lent are the Afghanis, on whom my country imposed terrible violence when we occupied their country for 20 years and then left them in dire straits when we tired of the occupation.

Data collected in September and October of 2024 found that an estimated 11.6 million people, 25% of the total population, were experiencing acute food insecurity. Projections for November through March of this year — the lean season for food production in their country — were 14.8 million people, or 32% of the population.

Nearly 3.5 million children, ages 6 to 59 months, are suffering and projected to suffer acute malnutrition between June 2024 and May 2025 and require urgent interventions. This includes 867,300 cases of severe acute malnutrition and almost 2.6 million cases of moderate acute malnutrition. Additionally, 1.2 million pregnant and breastfeeding women are expected to suffer acute malnutrition in the same period. 

The World Food Program says it can support only 6 million Afghanis this winter. It is prioritizing women-headed families with food, cash, and nutrition assistance. However, it needs $652 million in additional funding to sustain its operations through June. It’s not going to get the money from Donald Trump and Elon Musk.

By contrast, during the Biden administration we continued to provide humanitarian assistance. According to the office of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, from Oct. 1, 2021, to March 31, 2024, the U.S. appropriated about $2.8 billion for assistance to Afghanistan. Of this amount, around $1.97 billion was allocated for humanitarian aid and $415 million for development assistance. Last year, we committed and obligated more than $885 million to address critical needs such as food security, healthcare and support for displaced populations.

Before we wax nostalgic for “the good old days,” let’s note that the $2.8 billion in aid was equal to only 40% of the $7 billion in foreign exchange reserves that President Joe Biden refused to return to the Afghani central bank. His administration claimed that because the U.S. hadn’t recognized the Taliban-led government as legitimate and that we maintained sanctions on it, the Afghani government wasn’t entitled to its money.

So, Biden retained half of it, supposedly to further compensate victims of 9/11, which was perpetrated by Saudis, not Afghanis. The other half was placed in a Swiss-based foundation the U.S. government established in collaboration with international partners. Called the “Fund for the Afghan People,” it has managed the $3.5 billion and was supposed to disburse it in ways that would benefit Afghanistan’s economy and people.

By the time Biden left office, none of the funds, then grown to $4 billion, had been disbursed. This despite pleas by international economists and organizations for us to release them to mitigate the country’s economic and humanitarian crises. Could there be a more striking confirmation that the “rules-based order” over which the U.S. claimed to preside was simply an order in which the U.S. made the rules?

President Trump doesn’t feel the need even to pay lip service to rules (which is not to his credit). So, on Jan. 31, the inevitable happened. The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction recommended that the administration and Congress consider returning the $4 billion to the “custody and control” of the U.S. government. It’s likely that the $7.5 billion that belongs to Afghanistan and would go far to avert starvation there will end up in the U.S. treasury to offset by a negligible amount the deficit that Trump’s extension of tax cuts to the wealthy will produce.

Another discipline of Lent is to meditate on the crucified Jesus. Perhaps we can recognize his image in the Aghanis, whom we nailed to the cross in 2001 and have let hang there in pain ever since. We might also see him in the people of Gaza. The day after the first phase of the ceasefire agreement ended on March 1, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that, with Trump’s blessing, Israel has condemned them to starvation.

Herbert Rothschild’s columns appear Fridays. Opinions expressed in them represent the author’s views. Email Rothschild at [email protected].