 barn so welcome everyone tonight we'll be looking at unfreezing the assets in afghan afghanistan's assets and venezuela's assets the politics behind that demand uh the obstacles uh the challenges and we are ready for those challenges the actions we'll be taking we ask you to stay with us till the end of the call when we write the white house and the state department to unfreeze billions of dollars that could be used to fund health care and education pay the teachers uh i'd like to mention some of our guests tonight we have medea benjamin you know her co-founder codepink uh mesuta sultan uh who's been championing the rights of women children uh health care workers in afghanistan and then auto flores one of our latin america coordinators at codepink will be talking about venezuela so first let's just check in uh do we have any updates medea any updates uh i know that you just got back from france so well i wanted to give an update of where i'm going on friday uh and that is to cuba with a plain load of food that many of you have helped us fundraise for um we're very excited that as a way to counter these sanctions and embargoes and restrictions uh we the american people uh are sending what do we got we've got tuna powdered milk pasta vegetable oil we've chartered a plane and we're taking it down on friday wow that's exciting so uh how much any idea how much you raised for this oh it's uh it's over a hundred thousand excellent and i know that previously codepink sent in a lot of uh medical supplies right to cuba yeah we had raised five hundred thousand for medical supplies um so you know it's as as we work on these policies and we're working hard on policies on all of these countries that the us is sanctioning uh we also have to show that we the people uh are taking uh matters into our own hands and doing something to even in a very symbolic way counter the policies well thank you so much for that before i forget shea labelle is our tech navigator and also just you know a fabulous member of the codepink team and shea why don't you say hi and tell us about what's happening after the main part of our program yeah thank you so much mercy and hi everybody um after the main program this evening we are going to have a quick discussion about some congressional actions that we are working on and ways that we want people to kind of support um surrounding the national defense authorization act the eagle act um and barb release resolution is that the other thing that's right yes yeah so go ahead mercy i was gonna say so we have this program uh the codepink congressional liaisons the purpose being to organize your congressional district to develop relationships with the staffers to meet with your staffers and send emails and create you know organize actions as well so we want to invite you to stay after even if you haven't officially signed up by all means you're welcome to join us after the main part of our call shea mentioned a few things i can update you on one of which is tomorrow's exciting i'm Barbara Lee our representative in california the only one to vote against the us invasion of afghanistan she's going to be introducing a resolution she's been working with veterans for peace on this codepink has been part of this uh that will call on the military to track report and reduce all of its greenhouse gas emissions from all operations including troop deployment drone attacks bases and weapons production she has 20 cosponsors as of this hour 20 original cosponsors so that's great we hope that everybody on this call will ask their congressperson to cosponsor as well she as she also mentioned the eagle act that we're not sure when that's going to be voted on it's very troubling meeks has written this bill and part of it is to jack up the military budget even more you can believe it it's already so high 778 billion dollars and it's to send more precision missiles to the south china sea and declares taiwan and national military priority anyway we have a campaign don't let the eagle act flies with congress with petition and we're interested in all of us all of you delivering this petition to your congressional representative so we'll talk about that after the call as well and then of course we want to lobby heavily our senators our us senators to vote no on this ndaa this coming up could come up as early as next week honey i wanted to say hi and tell us what you've been up to hi hi everyone first and foremost we have over 70 people in this on our zoom call today so i would love to know where you're all from where you're joining from so please introduce yourselves in the chat let us know where you're logging in from because we haven't we're this is a national audience so this is great but uh yeah so over the weekend we had the privilege of hosting former ohio senator senator um i was going to say marsy winnegrat senator nita turner uh here in california and so we had two wonderful meeting greets um planned for her and uh she was here uh we celebrated the progressive movement i saw some faces that i haven't seen before in person including our very own jody evans who i have to say medea her hugs are just as warm as yours and so um yeah that's about it here for me but i'll hand it back to you marsy thank you honey and you know you're reminded me that we do have this pledge and it's on the code pink website maybe at some point show you can link to it in the chat you have a moment and the pledge is and we've asked our representatives to sign this before the pledge says basically that um i will not not i not me but if i'm a person in congress or if i'm running for office i will not accept any money or at least no more than $200 uh from the top five military contractors which are general dynamics north of grumman lockheed martin raytheon and bowling uh as well as the nra so we're already out there we're asking candidates to sign and we have a couple of candidates who've already signed and we want to ask the incumbents to sign as well so please take a look at that pledge and ask your representative to sign it thank you all right let's get moving let's move on with the agenda tonight we're first going to start with our conversation medea benjamin our co-host co-founder of code pink she's been working really hard on a campaign to pay the afghan teachers and unfreeze the billions and assets held by us banks the world bank the imf and she is also going to be in conversation with masuda sultan who is working very hard on that as well so medea take it away uh well wait i think hania first is going to introduce masuda yes okay thank you thank you medias uh an honor and a privilege to introduce uh my sister masuda sultan who is an afghan american women's rights activist and an entrepreneur who has been working for over 20 years in support of women's and girls in education vocational training and protection from violence in 2008 miss sultan was appointed as the advisor to the uh ministry of finance in afghanistan in 2019 she co-founded all in peace and i had an opportunity to take a look at the mission statement and um she has been fighting for a comprehensive ceasefire immediately ending the longest war in us history creation of peaceful and stable afghanistan and afghanistan that protects and promotes human rights and a movement of ordinary people expressing their desire for peace but this really is a coalition of organization that is um dedicated to ending the war um and make it a peaceful ending miss sultan currently serves on the council on foreign relations woman and foreign policy advisory committee and is a member of the us afghan and us afghan women's council her memoir my war at home was published in early 2006 by uh simon and shoester she has an mta from harvard university uh masuda please take it away um good evening everyone first of all i want to say i'm so honored to be with all of you um media my friend uh from 20 years ago uh who i met when um i had gone back to afghanistan to see what was happening just uh at the fall of the taliban regime and uh to see bahima on this call who um i have a very uh uh distinct memory of us arriving to dubai with um cardboard boxes and boxes and boxes of humanitarian supplies that fahima had collected in the united states um and we ended up getting stuck in dubai and trying to get to afghanistan and having an adventure in dubai on the way together it's such a great um pleasure to see you again fahima um so i am here because of afghanistan um i um as mentioned i'm an afghan-american i have been working on women's issues uh and other afghan issues for um about it's over 20 years um and um the way that this uh happened where unfreeze afghanistan this new initiative that um we're doing uh with uh code pink and medea benjamin came about is that um as afghanistan uh was uh falling um we were talking to women on the ground and trying to assess what was going on and we heard from the teachers that they had not been paid since june um which obviously was under the ghani administration and that the same was true for the healthcare workers um and we received a letter from that uh from the teachers association of afghanistan which represents 45 000 teachers um telling us this so uh we uh decided to investigate a little further through our friends and realized uh this was a very very big problem uh that teachers were uh working without pay and that as schools were um opening up that of course we wanted all girls schools and all boys schools to open in afghanistan so we know that from grades one to six boys and girls are going to school in afghanistan in grades seven to 12 uh boys are going to school throughout the country girls in about at least four provinces or maybe five provinces there they've begun to go to school now the taliban have promised that they're going to open other schools but there's been an um some would say an unreasonable delay um in opening those schools and what the reasons have been given by the taliban are that um they have some logistical challenges um in terms of wanting to ensure safety for these girls they have uh we believe challenges with the segregation because boys will be taught by men and girls will be taught by women and that's something that's been going on anyway but they um uh the segregation of the of the students but the teachers is where they have to adjust there may be some adjustments to the curriculum that's also possible um and we know that um that teachers can't work for free there's about 220 000 teachers in afghanistan about half of them are women this is the largest block of female employed in afghanistan the largest block of women working is these teachers so we really believe this is a women's issue um you know we often talk about women's rights in afghanistan uh we'd like to draw attention to women's lives um and women's lives right now are in peril in afghanistan they are um in need of um uh they are short on basic food and supplies they are going hungry the level of poverty the un says if nothing is done um and it has been extremely slow and has yet um we don't have uh where people are really suffering on the ground in afghanistan right now let me tell you um the all the aid programs have stopped essentially except for maybe some food deliveries and basic medical um about 45 of the country's gdp was financed from outside donors and when that tap stops overnight people really suffer the banks have um are only allowed to uh you're only allowed to take 200 dollars out of the bank per week and you may stay in line anywhere from a day to three days just to collect that 200 dollars now if you're an NGO and you're trying to pay your rent you cannot pay your rent because you are limited by that 200 dollars and so uh there are women on the ground that i'm talking to that are previously were in shelters that are now having to beg on the street because they don't have the firewood that they need to pay for their uh to heat their homes as we enter the winter and the rent is due so these are very concerning things that are happening and really it's the the people that are suffering it's the same people the afghan people that had nothing to do with uh uh any of this that are really hurting right now so i think we need to maybe look at our policies on the us side because education was girls education was the brightest spot of our 20-year intervention i am so proud to be an american when i read about all the initiatives when i go to afghanistan and i see a us aid you know from the american people outside of a girl school or hear about something we've done with with backpacks or unicef i think if we can keep that going it really is in our interest and we've said it many times that you know girls education is kind of a red line for the for the for the entire world i think it's the right moment to push for the schools to be opened but also to push for these teacher salaries and healthcare worker salaries to be paid of which UNDP is stepping out to pay about 25 000 of them through a novel mechanism and we've been doing a lot of research on payment mechanisms and finding that there are ways to perhaps you could target payments to these teachers for example have bank accounts most of them they there's there's mobile money payment methods that can be utilized for example we know that people have paid 45 000 teachers one of the telecom companies and there's biometrics involved and those can be tailored or if there's a problem with the biometrics that can be adjusted as well so or to unfreeze the nine and a half billion dollars that are frozen currently in both the new york banks central bank the federal reserve and in european banks or the afghan reconstruction trust fund which is a bunch of money sitting that is assigned for afghanistan's teachers and healthcare workers in the world bank if they were just to release that money that would really ease the the the trouble on the ground this problem is so big that we're expecting a famine in afghanistan there has been a sustained drought the worst drought in 35 years is happening right now afghanistan has lost 40 percent of its crops wheat crops food and price inflation the other day someone told me they were buying oil for 700 afghani per container and now the price has gone to 2500 afghani per container and when families are are trying to decide whether to send a daughter to school and pay the tuition if she's in a private school or you know get an injection for a cancer one of their daughters has cancer whether they should try to pay for that and they're even getting a hard time getting that injection because it comes from india this woman told me and all the flights have stopped so there's no medical supplies coming into afghanistan so about a million children are expected to die this winter and it's something that we you know in terms of american legacy i think whatever happened in afghanistan we know that that people have been suffering and we know that as americans we are generous we are kind we have already assigned all of these monies to afghanistan we just need to have the will to find a way to get it to them and i think we will have done a very good thing so i know mesudia that you have to leave and so i just wanted to thank you for all the work that you've been doing and for spending some time with us tonight i can take over and answer and just follow up on some of the issues that you brought up and then we'll have a time after leonardo speaks about venezuela we'll have a time for your questions on either afghanistan venezuela or sanctions in general but thank you so much for mesuda for joining us and thank you madia thank you for your support for afghanistan okay it's great working with you likewise so i will just follow up on some of the issues that mesuda brought up a couple of things the assets were frozen because the u.s and the international community doesn't recognize the taliban and so it's not clear that they have access to those funds the reason they haven't been recognized is that there is a lot of uncertainty as to how they will govern and if they will fulfill the promises they made to the international community that include things like forming a more representative government that includes ethnic minorities and women allowing women to not only go to school but continue all kinds of work making sure that afghanistan does not become a haven for terrorist groups and other commitments like that there is concern that if money were given directly to the government that that could be diverted by the taliban to other ends and then there's also revenge you know when the u.s loses a war it doesn't like to support the winner in that war and a genuine concern that the taliban are a regressive misogynist government that many people do not want to recognize the fact that they did win and they're in power but the fact remains is that they did win and they are in power and as mesuda said it's the afghan people 38 million of them that are suffering now we're making it very clear that this is money that belongs to the afghan people we're not asking for new money although there is a call by the united nations for humanitarian aid we're talking about money that already exists that has been allocated for the afghan people and that these teachers these medical workers they are the same ones who were getting paid before and should be getting paid now so just a couple of other things in terms of the strategy the we have been talking directly to people in the world bank in the state department in the administration and there are a lot of people who understand how desperate the situation is and actually want to get this money to the afghan people they are mainly concerned about the politics of it because it was so disastrous the way the biden administration left afghanistan and the the biden government administration doesn't want to be seen as coddling the taliban doesn't want to be seen as strengthening the taliban in any way and so it really is pure politics the and what people in the administration have told us is that it would be good if they could get some support from congress now the republicans just want to play politics and blame the biden administration for anything and everything and there are many democrats who uh did not like the idea of leaving afghanistan and don't want to be supportive of anything that can sound like they are supporting the taliban so we have had many meetings now with members of congress and they said well show us ways that we can unfreeze some of this money that can go around the taliban that can go directly into people's bank accounts or their phone accounts and so we've been speaking to the phone companies to the banks and finding out indeed there are ways to do this and we're sending fact sheets directly to our members of congress so that they can have the talking points right there about how this can be done but our main sense is that where there's a will there's a way and that we have to show that there is grassroots support from the american people to say don't let the afghan people starve to death freeze to death in the brutal winters um unfreeze this money so that the afghan uh people the public servants and there's over 200 thousand of them can get paid and the afghan economy can get moving uh that a collapse would be calamitous for the afghan people but it would also be calamitous for the neighboring countries who are also experiencing the already experiencing the mass migration that has happened since the us pull out it will be even worse and it will affect all of europe as well we're also saying to our us government officials that if they are indeed concerned about which they should be about the extremist groups like al-qaeda and isis a failed state in afghanistan will result in a civil war and will be the fertile grounds for even further strengthening of those extremist terrorist organizations so it's in our interest as well as in the interest of a humane policy to support the afghan people in this very difficult time so i'll stop here so we can move on to hear from leo and venezuela and then we can take your questions during the q&a part okay and i i just wanted to urge everyone to stay on to the end of the call because we will be writing to the white house and state department about the importance the urgency of unfreezing these funds both for afghanistan and for venezuela and before i forget you know i think that we have to be really vocal about this there is the washington post just yesterday published an op-ed from john bolton trump's national security advisor that even trump fired because he said he would have gotten us involved in so many wars beating the drum to go back into afghanistan so that's where this this is going there are people who want to see this economic crisis worsen humanitarian crisis worsen so we will speak up later on the call stay tuned honey up please introduce leo thank you my dear honey i'm not sure okay well thank you so i mean i can i cannot say enough about this young man here that i have the honor of introducing we've worked on many many things together including sanctions just recently we co-wrote an op-ed for common dreams which i'll share momentarily on sanctions on iran and venezuela and leo i have to say it's i i'm i'm so i so look forward to learning from you and it's been such an honor to know you um and you know again you know you're a bright light uh in this in this uh war-torn world so um leo flores uh is code pinks latin-american coordinator who served as the senior political advisor in the venezuela embassy in washington dc from 2017 to 2019 and more recently participated in venezuelans uh by centennial congress of the peoples which brought together social movements from around the world he is also one of code pinks latin-american coordinators uh take it away please leo thanks so much ania and really the honor is very much reciprocated also thank you to marcia medea and shea for having these code pink congresses which i think are really a great way of learning about an issue and then taking action on an issue and so you know listening to mesuda i was first of all very glad that venezuelan doesn't have a winter because if it did the impact of sanctions would be so much worse i mean it's shocking that you know the the production is for a million children in afghanistan to die this winter uh it's it's so horrible and it really underscores the fact that sanctions kill and whenever you talk to someone who knows about sanctions who's from a sanctioned country they pretty much have very similar stories they have stories about hyperinflation about the lack of access to food and medicine into medical care about health services being totally degraded about uncertainty relating to their jobs and you know financial uncertainty as well and the same is true of course in venezuela where the sanctions have killed a hundred thousand people where it led to a 99 drop in government revenue and this is a government that is socialist meaning that it invests out of its yearly budget something like 80 to it's between 78 to 85 of its yearly budget has historically since the revolution began in venezuela gone towards social investment so if you have a 99 drop in revenue that means it's going to affect all of your social programs and every single person in the country is going to suffer you know if we had had this could be congress a couple of months ago i think i would have been much more optimistic about venezuela because there had been dialogue ongoing between the maduro government and the extreme right-wing opposition uh and i called them the extreme right-wing opposition because the opposition in venezuela is actually very divided you have a lot of what are so-called moderates who really want to engage in politics and to run for elections and you have these extremists led by juan guaido and his party juan guaido being the so-called interim president who was appointed by trump basically as the so-called president of venezuela and these extremists have called for an invasion they've attempted coups they've called for sanctions and they burn people alive during violent street protests so they're very much extremists they all get financial and logistical support from the u.s government regardless of whether it's a democrat or a republican in power and yet the maduro government was engaging in this dialogue with them and it was a very important dialogue and in so far it had important results relating to elections that are going to be held in a couple of weeks in venezuela uh these are kind of regional elections and it was expected i mean part of the dialogue included the issue of sanctions and it was expected that the biden administration would either begin to progressively lift sanctions or offered up a plan to do so uh as a part of this dialogue but instead what we got we learned in late september that the imf is blocking venezuela from accessing its five billion dollars in special drawing rights and here's another parallel with afghanistan because afghanistan is also being blocked from accessing its strs as they're called by the imf for very similar reasons in that the u.s government doesn't recognize the defect the power in afghanistan the the government there just as they don't recognize the democratically elected government nicole as maduro in venezuela and so for those of you who don't know what strs are they're called their special drawing rights and they're kind of an international currency that the imf can create uh they were last employed in 2009 following the financial crisis and they had a pretty important role at that point in reducing global unemployment and poverty and you know there's been kind of a year-long struggle to to release new a new issuance of fbrs because of the impact of the pandemic and republicans were holding it up in congress because they didn't want this money to go to venezuela or to iran and then eventually it finally gets pushed through and venezuela is still left out i mean this is these are it's strs are an international currency reserve that can be exchanged for other currencies or they can be you know used to purchase importers for the economy and in venezuela's case you know it would have certainly gone into the health care system which has been really destroyed by the u.s sanctions that have been going on now for over seven years and so the decisions to block the str venezuela from accessing its the strs is entirely due to the u.s and so and it's basically instead of giving us a plan to to lift the sanctions progressively the biden administration imposed a five billion dollar to facto sanction and but yet even this wasn't enough to to sabotage the dialogue between the maduro government and extreme opposition but what did kind of suspend the dialogue for now is the fact that the biden administration illegally extradited a venezuelan diplomat named alex sab from kate bairdut so imagine if the it had been the other way around if the venezuelan government had arrested an ally of long way though in the middle of negotiations you know what would have happened i mean it would it's clear to me that the media would have had a field day blaming maduro for kicking the piece table over for you know continuing the crisis in venezuela but instead you know we're not we're not getting the opposite which is that the biden administration should really be heavily criticized for this extradition of a diplomat i mean right now there's a diplomat a venezuelan diplomat in jail in miami which is in violation of the vienna conventions uh and so instead of blaming the biden administration for sabotaging the dialogue what we're getting in the media is we've been flooded with all these stories about alex sab is supposedly corrupt but i'm getting a bit of a head of advice left because i'm sure a lot of you have no idea who alex sab is so basically he's a businessman who had worked with the venezuelan government and went on the great housing mission that's the premier social program in venezuela it's built 3.7 million homes for poor and working class families the vast majority of these homes were built under sanctions and as the us began imposing progressively harsher sanctions on venezuela some of these actually targeting venezuelan's ability to import food and certainly deliberately targeting deliberately targeting the economy sab began working with the government on the what i think is the government's second most important social most important social program and that's the clap program clap as an acronym meaning local committees for production and supply and it's through this program that you know the the government sends boxes full of food and other necessities to seven million venezuelan families every single month and that's in a country of 30 million people so we're talking about the vast majority of venezuelan people have received these boxes of food and other necessities such as maybe cooking oil or toilet paper or whatever uh and it's been one of the ways that venezuelans have been able to survive this brutal economic war being waged by the united states so the us began targeting the clap program roughly in 2017 when the trump administration came to power i mean the us always talks about how you know food and other humanitarian aid is exempt from sanctions but in reality this isn't true because here we have a clear example of the us deliberately targeting a program that is feeding millions and millions of venezuelans every single month sob himself was sanctioned by the trump administration in 2019 but sob you know after having worked with the venezuelan government for years he was named a special envoy to iran and i believe it was russia in april 2018 he was basically named a diplomat a venezuelan diplomat in 2020 he was on his way to iran from venezuela to broker a deal for food fuel and medicine i don't know if you'll remember last year and this year there's been several stories of tanker of iranian tankers sailing to venezuela and that that's part of the the deals that saw broker these kind of fuel for food and medicine and and oil supplies and so on on his way over to iran he had to stop over for fuel and capability where he was illegal illegally arrested that diplomats again are supposed to have immunity he was also arrested without a warrant he was held without access to doctors he was tortured in prison he's actually a recent cancer survivor so his access to doctors was critically important and there was a kind of a year-long legal battle in kate verity over his extradition to the us and sob still had appeals pending both in kate verity and in the us when he was taken by the us i mean his family claims he was kidnapped and it's it's a claim that's easy to believe because his lawyers weren't even informed of his extradition so sob is also you know that because of you know this pressure by the us he was investigated by swiss authorities for three years they found nothing and they dropped the case under venezuel under the venezuel's national assembly when it was controlled by guan baidol and the opposition they themselves investigated sob and they exonerated him and just yesterday the us attorneys dropped seven of the eight charges against sob which sounds like good news but the remaining charge is one of conspiracy and conspiracy is such a nebulous charge and one that's almost impossible for people to defend themselves against and so it's really to me i think it's very clear that sob's not going to get a fair trial here in the us and so why sob's so important well he's been helping venezuel overcome the sanctions he knows the ins and outs of the clap program which is how venezuel has been able to keep its people fed and the base the us basically believes that if they can get sob to talk they can take down the financial network that's keeping venezuel afloat so and in doing so they're going to make ordinary venezuelan suffer more with the hope that they'll somehow rise up and overthrow their government which is not going to happen because sections don't actually lead to that despite the fact that that's kind of their intended intention so i mean the goal is basically regime change through suffering and the fact that al-absab is in prison is really kind of a kick in the teeth to those of us who really want peace in venezuela because it's led to the suspension of the dialogue and it's led to more tension between the us and venezuela so that's one of the campaigns that we've just kind of launched the campaign to free al-absab along with many other social movements in the us and we're going to keep making more noise about al-absab in the weeks to come thank you so much leo it's just horrible yeah it's horrific what's going on and people have no idea no idea this guy was kidnapped he's being tortured and uh on all these trumped up charges so let's bring madia back and we'll open up for some questions i noticed that a lot of people or multiple people asked are afghanistan and venezuela turning to other country as you mentioned iran uh who is helping yeah i mean i think so the first sanctions against venezuela actually happened in 2006 under the bush administration we don't talk about those much because they're military sanctions but before then venezuela had been a very clear military ally and client of the us and those sanctions prohibited venezuela from buying any us weapons or components so since that time venezuela has become much closer to russia to china uh to other countries in the global south as well there's been a strong emphasis on developing south south relations so and because of the sanctions of course this became even more important so venezuela has developed stronger economic ties to china to russia to iran and turkey and then inter regionally i think cuba bolivia ecuador among others though ecuador kind of dropped off because the right wing is has won there in recent years thank you madia are you there uh yes i am so what about uh that same question in terms of afghanistan is afghanistan receiving support aid from russia china other countries turkey well there is a a lot of money that's going into the un program for humanitarian aid and that's coming from a lot of the european countries china has not given that much uh they have um uh there has been uh a call from the united nations development fund from unicef from the world food program uh the pledges tend to be much more than the money that actually comes in uh and the need is so great that the amount just doesn't cover um what is needed uh in terms of where things will go economically certainly uh china has interests in the mines in afghanistan has interest in bringing afghanistan into the belton road initiative uh russia wants to trade with afghanistan but both russia and china uh and iran are all worried about stability in afghanistan because there are uh terrorist groups that have affected all three of those countries uh china russia and iran that have found a home in afghanistan in the past and so they are worried and want to see whether the taliban will indeed come through on um expelling those groups from afghanistan and um before we go on with another question i just wanted to see could we bring in uh fahima are you um can we unmute you because there were some questions about uh girl schools and um plus just any general comments you are a afghan american who's been working for many many years in afghanistan actually building schools so i would i'd love for you to comment on whatever you'd like to say oh thank you dear and thank you all um yes uh the um some of the schools are open some of the high schools are actually open in some provinces but not all over afghanistan but the schools in general elementary schools are open in most of the countries there might be some rural areas that the girls schools are not open but the elementary schools are open in fact we just built a school um this year in achin where the mother of albam dropped in 2017 and destroyed many villages we opened the first school in 14 years we we were the only organization in 14 years to get in there we opened the school but then we built a school i mean actually when we opened the school it was under the center so in those areas alabama had the much power but they did not mind um indeed it's not the uh opening schools because the villagers wanted that um so um the way it just clarifies you said you built a school in an area that was run by the taliban they didn't stop you from doing that and obviously that school was open to boys and girls no just a girl just a girl school the area was not run by the taliban but the taliban were strong there that was but um you know even in the rural areas the villagers still have to go and get permission from the taliban because they wanted to protect their schools or their homes or whatever institution is there they have to get permission from them they have to get agreement from them that they um you know the the institution would be protected so yes we formed the school in 2019 and we built the school uh we started February of this year we finished it and it was inaugurated in September in fact the taliban came for the opening of the school with their white flags on the podium and they opened the school and they promised that the school would be a high school but so far it's just elementary school um so um people do have a lot of issues problems there women have a lot of problems and taliban have not changed very much and especially the foot soldiers of the taliban in the rural areas they have not changed very much because they they don't know whether in the taliban don't have the authority yet they are not subtle yet um and in those people those those foot soldiers of the taliban they have very little education or not no educations for them um education in general and especially women education is not important so it is like the rural areas are run by different groups of the taliban so um that is one issue um another issue was that we were talking about some masuda was talking about the usc id's support and somebody made a comment and that's a good thing um but i wish the usc id did some more work in the rural areas yes there are some work of usc id in cabal and in big cities but the rural areas there are not much being done like i said we were the only organization after 40 years to get to achine and we we were the um that school the people that's the only girl school for like five or six villages in that district in the whole district so um the the news that i'm getting from the ground is not very pleasant um of course there's a lot of beating there are a lot of um harassing and uh as masuda said that um the the salaries are not being paid of course there is no money uh i have sent some money but the western union could not give the money to the people that i have sent to and actually i'm i keep borrowing money for our project there for our teacher's salary for our school supplies and stuff um and also um many many women are staying home they are not they're not allowed to work or they are not working and some because there is no salary they don't want to go to work and because there's harassment they don't want to go to work and especially in the rural areas i mean the cities are probably in a better shape than the rural areas that rural areas are very very difficult for for women especially so um that's what i'm hearing every day like i said that harassment and beating is is going on every day um i mean the the the government of the the government body of the Taliban they may not know about it they probably don't get that report but the foot soldiers of the Taliban they are committing a lot of crime and atrocity there ahima desmond khan uh in delaware he asked uh who are you working with what's the name of your organization we have a small organization it's a non-profit all volunteer organization it's called afghan women's fund we work on education of women in empowerment of women it's self-sufficiency we have built schools in afghanistan mostly in the rural areas we built like about four fourteen fifteen schools um so far in clinics and digging wells and hundreds and hundreds of vocational training literacy classes for women and you know helping medical supplies and school supplies and so on and on well thank you for all of your good work uh hania or shei perhaps you can take a question from the chat uh if there's a question for leo about venezuela let's let's ask uh sure i do have a question for um fahima if that's okay have shei ask leo the question on venezuela but can you put in perspective what the u.s actually has done in the name of democracy in afghanistan that we should celebrate here as a country because um i don't know that answer and and that is a big history uh media and i talked about it many times when the u.s well actually the u.s supported the fundamentalist in the past four decades the mojahedin who were the the first generation of the taliban their fundamentalists they they were supported by the u.s way before even the soviet union invaded afghanistan and then when the soviet went to afghanistan of course that that support for them was very big and open and then uh you know with the afghan government uh the soviet union left and the afghan government collapsed i just wanted to make it sure the afghan government collapsed the mojahedin came to power and they were fighting among themselves and the process turns thousands of people got killed of course this mojahedin who came to power didn't don't know much about how to govern a country they did not know about the international law or anything they they they were not very civilized people they were uneducated people and as we we all know u.s always support the the brutal the dictators the worst of the worst in in the third world countries so um they committed so much crime that from that group another group who were the taliban came actually the taliban of the second generation of the mojahedin but they promised peace and security and people were happy to at least not you know stop the bloodshed the taliban came and they they brought some peace but you know i always say that there is peace and prison too but they made afghanistan prison too um to the afghans in five years of their atrocity and their brutality um was just so much that you know then 9 11 happened whoever did the 9 11 back and people had nothing to do with 9 11 and we we all know where the 9 11 came from and the people who committed came from and who were they so um just just one thing in fact the u.s supported those fundamentals who became the terrorists and then got rid of them and then 20 years so-called democracy still put the violators of human rights and and women's rights in power so and then you know now again dealt with the taliban and brought the but like 35 million people afghans on a silver plate and and delivered them to the terrorist taliban so that's what they used it i'm not against withdrawing but i'm against the irresponsible withdrawing of the u.s in giving the country to the taliban all right well thank you i want to give leonardo a chance i know somebody asked a question in the chat uh why are we so hostile to venezuela is it all about oil yeah i mean i think that's the the big answer so venezuela has the biggest oil reserves in the world they've also got important reserves of rare earth minerals gold water so all these natural resources obviously appeal to the u.s i think there are a couple of other reasons too the second one is of course the venezuela's you know embarking on a socialist project and that is a threat in itself to to u.s capitalism and that's why we see so many attacks against cuba it's because of socialism and on venezuela it's the same and the third is that you know prior to the bolivarian revolution which started in 1999 venezuela was basically the u.s's most important ally in latin america uh and then when the revolution happened that began to change very quickly because venezuela was one of the countries that led the movement against the free trade agreement of the americas this would have been imposed basically a hemisphere wide free trade zone and venezuela was against it because the people of latin america were against it and since then venezuela's kind of been a thorn in the side of the u.s in terms of geopolitical ambitions in latin america thank you leo i don't know uh if you want to say anything in closing it is uh 10 of and we do like to at least some time for our action so anything else you want to say that hasn't been said leo uh no just thank thank everyone for being here for taking the action because it's really important to keep this momentum going about sanctions about alexa about afghanistan i mean the u.s is causing so much suffering in the world and i'm glad there are people here that see that and fight against it me too thank you leo madia anything else you want to say before we move to the action yeah i think there's been a little confusion tonight about the role of the us and in terms of some things like a i d and building schools and i just want to say that remember the u.s was spending 300 millions of dollars a day every day for 20 years on its occupation of afghanistan and if that were being used to do things good for the afghan people they wouldn't be in such horrific straits as they are today there would be schools all over the country there would be infrastructure projects built like the chinese will probably do with them now there would be afghanistan would not be the worst place in the world for women to give birth most of that money was spent on on war occupation militarism and things that contributed to the misery of the afghan people sure you can find a school here and there that they built or something positive but that's the exception not the rule so that only makes it even more important that we say that in addition to all the harm that the u.s caused for afghanistan they should not in taking revenge now steal the billions of dollars that has been designated for the afghan people and is in u.s reserve banks in new york city is in the world bank which is controlled by the united states of biden where to say tomorrow release that money from the world bank that money would be released the same for the special drawing rights so we are keeping that money from from the afghan people we are continuing the miserable policies that we have had towards afghanistan for decades now and that's one of the reasons we're excited that you all will take this action tonight to say unfreeze those funds let the teachers be paid the health care workers be paid the people that are providing basic services for afghanistan deserve to get their salaries so thank you