The UN on Tuesday January 11 asked for five billion dollars – a record amount – to try to prevent Afghanistan from sinking into one of the most serious humanitarian disasters in its history. This humanitarian aid plan is only an emergency solution, but “the fact is that without (this aid plan), there will be no futurefor Afghanistan, said Martin Griffiths, the UN Under-Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs, during a press briefing in Geneva on Monday.
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The UN needs 4.4 billion dollars from donor countries to fund humanitarian needs this year, the largest amount ever requested for a single country, said a statement from the organization. This amount would be spent on expanding food delivery and support for agriculture, funding health services, treatment for malnutrition, emergency shelters, access to water and sanitation but also l ‘education. Some 22 million people, more than half of the country’s population, are in urgent need of assistance. The UN has also asked for an additional $623 million to help the 5.7 million Afghan refugees, some for many years, in five neighboring countries, mainly Iran and Pakistan.
Filippo Grandi, the High Commissioner for Refugees, warned bluntly: “If the country collapses, implodes (…) then we will see a much larger exodus of people. And this population movement will be difficult to manage in the region but also beyond, because it will not stop in the region.“.
In Kabul, the Taliban welcomed the UN call. “We need food and other types of humanitarian aid for the people of Afghanistan, more than 90% of the people live below the poverty line“, told AFP, a senior Taliban official, Suhail Shaheen. The United States – whose accelerated withdrawal of military assistance hastened the arrival of the Taliban to power – immediately announced a first donation of 308 million dollars. This money must primarily help with food, health and protection from the rigors of winter, underlined the American Agency for International Aid (USAID), in a press release.
No money for the Taliban
Afghanistan has been ruled since mid-August by the Taliban, who have regained power, ousting the government, supported at arm’s length by the international community and American military power after 20 years of guerrilla warfare. The sanctions regime put in place to try to make concessions to Islamic fundamentalists, in particular on women’s rights, has precipitated the country – already highly dependent on international aid – into a deep economic crisis. It is further aggravated by drought.
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To reassure donors, Martin Griffiths stressed that the funds – which represent a quarter of the country’s official GDP – will go directly through some 160 NGOs and UN agencies on the ground. A distribution facilitated by the improvement of the security situation. For this aid to be most effective,all aid workers, especially women, must be allowed to operate independently, safely and have the opportunity to reach women and girls unimpededUSAID insisted.
The decision of the Security Council in December to facilitate humanitarian aid for a year and gestures of goodwill from Washington have helped to reassure the financial actors, paralyzed by the fear of contravening the sanctions and thus depriving the country of the liquidity essential to its operation. Civil servants, teachers, nursing staff have sometimes not been paid for months. According to the Taliban representative, the arrival of dollars would also help to fight against inflation in the country.
De facto dialogue
While the international community is still looking for an effective way to put pressure on the Taliban so that they change in particular the way they treat women, very quickly deprived of most of the rights acquired in hard struggle for 20 years, Filippo Grandi explained that this aid “also created a space for dialogue with the Taliban which is very valuable“. A lever. “It is this space that we must preserve because at the moment the political sphere is lagging behind“, he added, acknowledging however that it will take time to “move towards stability and who knows maybe even some form of normalization“.
The United States has pledged an initial aid package for Afghanistan of more than $300 million for this year. This money must primarily help with food, health and protection from the rigors of winter, underlined the American Agency for International Aid (USAID), in a press release. President Joe Biden is accused of accelerating the Taliban’s rise to power by hastening the end of military aid to Kabul.