Thirsting for Justice Under Empire

 By Kathy Kelly

Reprinted with permission; first published for World BEYOND War, June 19, 2025; https://worldbeyondwar.org/thirsting-for-justice-under-empire/

 

“To ravage, to slaughter, to usurp under false titles, they call empire; and where they make a desert, they call it peace.” – Tacitus, recorded in Agricola, 98 AD

Here in NYC, while participating in a Veterans for Peace and Allies forty day “Fast for Gaza,” we’ve felt horror over reports of Gazans deliberately deprived, in a mass starvation campaign, of water. Even if they survive the attacks on food distribution sites and manage to obtain a box containing lentils and flour, how will they prepare food without water?

Instead of partnering with Israel to ethnically cleanse Palestine, eradicate Gaza, and attack Iran, U.S. people should say two simple words, “We’re sorry,” and immediately work to make reparations.

Young Afghans displaced by occupation and war have steadily expressed anguish over the genocide Israel and the U.S. are waging against Palestinians.

More than most people on the planet, Afghans understand the grotesque consequences of war and occupation. As the U.S. threatens to bomb Iran with a 30,000 pound Massive Ordnance Penetrator “bunker buster,” Afghans recall the first and only time such a bomb has been used. Targeting an ISIS cave complex in eastern Afghanistan in April of 2017, the U.S. military dropped the “Mother of All Bombs,” in Nangarhar, causing incalculable levels of contamination and radiation.

War and occupation forced Afghans to learn ways to be “water frugal.” Once, in 2015, I asked Zekerullah, a young teen, about buying spinach when he went to the market. He gently explained this would be unwise because the the community couldn’t use its limited water supply to wash spinach. And I recall later living with a women’s community formed by the young volunteers and wanting to celebrate completion of their final exams by serving a special food. Eyes were alight as Zarghuna suggested we might have lettuce. These same young women had helped visitors navigate icy mountain paths to visit impoverished widows living in mud huts far above the closest source of water. Lack of access to water meant lower rent, but also involved backbreaking, dangerous treks up and down the mountainside to collect water. At one of the language classes these young women taught to women and girls in Kabul’s refugee camps, I remember a grandmother clinging to me, sobbing, as she told of going for months without once washing her hair.

The U.S. occupiers who arrogantly built bases across Afghanistan seemingly never cared about the severe water shortage. Water went first to the occupiers as their bases drained local water tables. Constant fighting forcibly displaced large populations into cities with inadequate water resources. The cost of digging to reach water widened the divide between the wealthy and the desperately impoverished, since only the former could afford to hire expensive borehole rigs.

 Recently, an Afghan friend alerted us to warnings that Afghanistan will likely be the world’s first country to run out of water within the next five years.

Yet, as foreign companies develop plans for vast mining operations in Afghanistan, the water table will be lowered even further.

Through permaculture studies, our young Afghan friends learned techniques for water conservation. They practiced ways to rehabilitate arid land. Bringing their skills and determination with them, many were assisted by permaculture experts to resettle in new lands. A young couple now living in Portugal will soon host an online book club about these experiences.

We who watch engineered famines and see merchants of death constantly gain the upper hand, must follow the lead of young people and permanently change our culture, –thirsting for peace, not war. Young people who’ve experienced the ravages of war can help drive the transformation we desperately need to build a far better world.

 

Kathy Kelly, kathy.vcnv@gmail.com, board president of World BEYOND War, will be part of the World BEYOND WAR month long book club focusing on “Our Journey from Afghanistan: A Story of Survival and Hope” by Qasim and Zar.