Another painful and gloomy winter is arriving, and things
seem to be moving toward more hopelessness and despair in Afghanistan.
The Taliban regime seems unable, and financially
incapacitated, to tackle the dire humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan. UN
Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in Afghanistan Richard
Bennett presented his report to the UN General Assembly on October 26,
corroborating the dreadful fears of humanitarian organizations about the
horrible food and humanitarian crisis there.
اضافة اعلان
Ever since the US marines hastily vacated Kabul in August
last year, the country has been continuously sinking into a quagmire of
socio-economic chaos and economic instability. In the aftermath of September
11, the US invaded Afghanistan, in October 2001, with the ostensible objective
of driving the Taliban out of power after they refused to hand over members of
Al-Qaeda terrorist group who were identified as responsible for the New York
attacks. After spending trillions of dollars on the Afghanistan “war and
reconstruction” efforts for two decades, the US miserably failed to achieve an
inclusive and enduring political settlement to the conflict.
The spectacular failure of the US forces gradually pushed
successive US governments to eventually relinquish the Afghanistan
misadventure. But the Biden administration had no clear idea of how to end the
war in Afghanistan. The deep chasm in the thinking of military and political
leaders in Washington, whose objectives were limited to achieving a “zero-sum
victory” and driving the Taliban out of power, was the main reason for the
highly disorganized and panicky withdrawal from Kabul.
One of the world’s worst humanitarian crises has completely
swamped Afghanistan. According to the World Food Organization, more than 24.4
million people need urgent humanitarian assistance and half the population of
an estimated 38.9 million faces acute food insecurity. Furthermore, 89 percent
of the population faces insufficient food consumption despite the fact that
most households spend over 90 percent of their income on food.
A similar situation is painted by the UN Office for the
Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, which estimates that 4.7 million Afghans
are suffering from acute malnutrition in 2022, a 21 percent increase over 2021.
Most Afghan households have lost some or all of their
livelihoods in this last year. Two key factors are directly responsible for
this situation: exceedingly stringent restrictions on the country’s banking
sector and international humanitarian and development funds; and the US
government’s decision to freeze more than $9.5 billion in assets belonging to
Afghanistan’s Central Bank.
Following the Biden administration’s decision to freeze the
Afghan government’s reserves held in US bank accounts, the EU and Britain
suspended their development aid programs. IMF followed suit and suspended the
distribution of emergency currency reserves, and the World Bank halted funding
for dozens of projects.
The hunger is increasingly evident in every street and corner of Afghanistan. Long queues outside the bread shops and riots over food items in different parts of the country are now daily routine.
Indubitably,
decades of incessant conflict, widespread corruption and political instability
had already catapulted the country into poverty and deprivation. The revival of
the Taliban regime, and the withdrawal of international funding and freezing of
central bank assets as a result pushed the country to the verge of complete
collapse. The resultant liquidity crisis and economic downfall saw tens of
millions of Afghans plunge into hunger and poverty. The ongoing drought, the
coronavirus pandemic and natural disasters further devastated the country, amid
a global food crisis and high prices for key commodities.
In addition to
strangulating Afghanistan’s assets, the US also stopped most of its financial
assistance to the development projects there.
With a clear intention to block the Taliban’s access to foreign assets,
the US government imposed extremely tight restrictions on transactions with
Afghanistan’s Central Bank. This has severely hampered the payment of essential
projects and salaries of millions of government officials, including teachers,
health workers and other general workers, further exacerbating the crisis.
The debilitated
financial status of the ruling Taliban makes them in no position to feed the
Afghan people. The hunger is increasingly evident in every street and corner of
Afghanistan. Long queues outside bread shops and riots over food items in
different parts of the country are now daily routine.
Unemployment has
also reached unprecedented numbers. A minimum amount of $8 billion is needed to
bail Afghanistan out of the existing crisis. A simple solution is for the US to
release $9.5 billion and channel funds through relevant UN agencies, such as
World Food Program UNHCR, to provide much needed assistance at ground level.
Funds should also be supplied to ensure that
healthcare workers, teachers and public servants are paid, and thus are able to
feed their families and contribute to the economy. Additionally, the
international community should find ways to revise sanctions, to facilitate
private businesses and commercial transactions to slowly allow the economy to
build. But the US and its Western partners are still struggling to strike a balance
between the desire to use financial aid as leverage over the Taliban and the
need to avert a looming humanitarian disaster.
The winter has
almost arrived in Afghanistan and time is running out to salvage the helpless
and hopeless Afghans. The international community is more occupied with the
Ukraine war, and the crisis in Afghanistan seems to be a distant priority now.
Imran Khalid is a freelance columnist on international affairs based in Karachi,
Pakistan. He has been contributing regularly pieces to publications like South
China Morning Post, Korea Times, New Straits Times, Jakarta Post, New Age,
Manila Times, Oman Observer, Arabian Post, Bangkok Post, Geopolitics and
Geopolitical Monitor.
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