Afghans held back in dream for better life

When the United States pulled its forces out of Afghanistan in August, Sayed Mohammed dared to dream that his life and that of his family would soon improve. Mohammed makes a living selling bread in Kabul and nurtured the hope that one day he would build up a modest business after the country's new government settled in.

But months on from the Taliban's establishment of an interim government, he speaks of the shortages in necessities.

And Mohammed, like other Afghans, lays a good deal of the blame on the United States, with its freezing of the country's financial assets in response to the Taliban's takeover.

With the mounting hardships, the Taliban ruled that people are limited to withdrawing no more than $200 a week from banks.

"America has paralyzed the banking system. That is why the banks can't give money to their customers," Mohammed told Xinhua News Agency.

As for his business, the prices of ingredients to make bread－flour, sugar and cooking oil－have soared, forcing him to double the prices. "The high price of US dollars has affected our business," he said.

Salim Khan, another resident of the Afghan capital, is also feeling the pinch. "Unfortunately, we no longer have enough money to buy anything. Everyone is suffocating in a stifling economic crisis."

Mary-Ellen McGroarty, the country director of the World Food Programme in Afghanistan, said recently that Afghanistan is facing "an avalanche of hunger and destitution the likes of which I have never seen in my 20-plus years" with the United Nations agency.

For months, Western countries, led by the US, have been urged to lift, or at least to reduce, the sanctions they have imposed on Afghanistan. The country now faces a life-or-death battle against poverty this winter, while more than $9 billion of Afghan assets remain frozen by Washington.

Amid the pain caused by the soaring prices, a rare bright spot has emerged for Afghans.

On Dec 22 the UN Security Council adopted a resolution to exempt humanitarian assistance in Afghanistan from an asset freeze against designated leaders of the Taliban and associated entities.

The resolution deems that humanitarian assistance and other activities that support basic human needs in Afghanistan are not a violation of the asset freeze stipulated in a 2015 Security Council resolution. The resolution strongly encourages providers to use reasonable efforts to minimize the accrual of any benefits to individuals or entities on the sanctions list.

The Taliban caretaker government, which was formed on Sept 7, has been struggling to deal with a declining economy and a deepening humanitarian crisis.

"The economy has always been in a poor state of affairs, and it has been primarily dependent on international aid," said Amina Khan, director of the Centre for Afghanistan, Middle East and Africa at the Institute of Strategic Studies in Islamabad.

Afghanistan's economic growth is projected to drop from $20 billion to $16 billion within a year, UN Development Programme said earlier this month. The nation's economic base is not up to the task of supporting its 38 million people, it said.

According to United Nations estimates in November, 60 percent of Afghans face "crisis levels of hunger", with the situation worsening by the day.

The World Health Organization predicts that 3.2 million children under the age of 5 in Afghanistan are at risk of acute malnutrition. According to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, 665,000 people joined the ranks of the displaced in Afghanistan between January and September. About 2.9 million Afghans had already been classified as internally displaced.

"The advent of winter has further exacerbated the situation. If left unattended, the situation could aggravate into a major humanitarian crisis," said Salman Bashir, a diplomat and former Pakistani ambassador to China.

For all Afghanistan's needs, international financial and aid agencies have been hamstrung in their efforts to help the Afghan people because of the Western sanctions.

"Sanctions against the Taliban are being applied against the people of Afghanistan as a whole," Bashir said. "This situation is untenable and could lead to the collapse of the state, which will have catastrophic regional and global consequences."

Amina Khan said the humanitarian emergency is pushing Afghanistan close to catastrophe.

"Winter is already there. People unfortunately are selling their household goods and in certain cases even selling their children because they just don't have any means for economic activities. They don't have any means of income," she said.

'Ultimate issue'

"And this ultimate issue is due to the freezing of assets. It's very difficult for even humanitarian aid to be channeled. It is money, not food or medicine, that cannot be channeled to Afghanistan under the garb of humanitarian aid as the banking system is frozen because of the sanctions."

With the US freezing Afghanistan's foreign reserves, the Afghan interim government has been unable to pay the salaries of government workers, reports say. The normal governance structures are just not functioning because of the strains, analysts say.

In a speech at the 17th Extraordinary Session of the Council of Foreign Ministers of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, or OIC, Afghanistan's acting Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi called the US' freezing of Afghan assets "a clear violation of the human rights of Afghans, and can be interpreted as enmity with an entire nation".

In sharp contrast to some Western countries' indifference to the humanitarian crisis, China and other countries have provided significant assistance to Afghanistan, covering food and other necessities, as well as medical supplies and COVID-19 vaccines. Their actions provide a ray of hope for desperate Afghans.

Afghanistan's caretaker government began to distribute the China-aided humanitarian supplies on Dec 24 to the country's 34 provinces.

China has said it would continue to give assistance such as food. On Dec 21 the Afghan Red Crescent Society received donations from the Red Cross Society of China.

On Dec 13 a second batch of winter supplies donated by China, including more than 70,000 blankets and 40,000 down coats, arrived in Kabul.

Earlier this month 27 containers packed with 500 metric tons of food and clothing donated by China arrived in the Afghan border city of Hairatan, in northern Balkh Province, a local official said.

On the health front, China has announced it will donate 3 million doses of vaccines and other medical supplies to Afghanistan. On Dec 8 a batch of COVID-19 vaccines donated by the Chinese government arrived in Kabul.

Other countries, including Russia, Iran, Pakistan, Turkmenistan and India, have also provided food, medicine and winter supplies to Afghanistan. There have been pledges of assistance from countries including Qatar, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates.

Last month Pakistan approved a corridor for supplies of food aid coming from India, in an initiative hailed as an exceptional gesture to help the Afghan people.

Food security program

Several international organizations are also making an effort to ease the humanitarian disaster in Afghanistan. The OIC's session on Dec 19 adopted a resolution to take a number of measures to help the Afghan people, including setting up a humanitarian trust fund, launching a food security program and coordinating with the WHO to secure vaccines and donations.

A triage center has been opened in the main hospital in Jalalabad city, the capital of the eastern Nangarhar Province, the state-run Bakhtar news agency reported on Tuesday. It was built at a cost of $100,000 with financial support from the WHO.

The International Committee of the Red Cross has pledged to support 18 major hospitals throughout Afghanistan next year, with the aim of providing up to 550,000 consultations a month.

Dominik Stillhart, the ICRC's director of operations, called for essential services in fields of health, education, water and sanitation to be maintained in the country.

However, experts say that political conditions imposed by the West on the Taliban are counterproductive in a situation where the basic rights of the Afghan people are in serious jeopardy.

The world has been urged to contribute further to address the pressing issues in Afghanistan. That means countries need to engage with the Taliban, either through officials in Doha or directly with them, and find ways to expedite humanitarian assistance, Amina Khan said in referring to Qatar's long-standing diplomatic role in hosting Taliban representatives over the years.

Bashir said there is high hope that the US government will review its policies and the sanctions with a view to enabling the UN, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund to assist Afghanistan.

"The West cannot remain aloof to the unfolding catastrophe," he said. "It has a moral responsibility to help the suffering people of Afghanistan. The humanitarian situation needs to be addressed with a sense of urgency."

Xinhua contributed to this story.