With the Taliban in power, Afghanistan and its people are in the midst of a world-historical humanitarian catastrophe that may not even have reached its peak.

No, it’s not August 2021, as Washington withdraws from its pointless, twenty-year occupation of the country and the Taliban seizes back control. This is 2022, and the reason you may not have heard much about it is because the solution, this time, doesn’t involve military force.

Ever since the Taliban took back power in August and September 2021, Afghanistan has been in the grip of a deadly crisis unparalleled in its already tumultuous modern history. While the Taliban are, to put it mildly, far from the country’s ideal stewards, this crisis has little to do with their policies. Rather, the causes are the worst drought in Afghanistan’s history, and the US sanctions that have devastated the nation’s economy and infrastructure from the moment the American military stopped bombing and killing.