The sum is the largest request for a single country ever. The United Nations, which has already had to roll back some aid operations in the wake of the ban on NGO workers, has appealed for $4.6bn to aid Afghanistan. The authors further warned that following the most recent rights rollbacks, “many Western politicians fear voters will not accept the idea of their taxes helping a country ruled by an odious regime,” while adding that “consultations in January 2023 among major donors produced initial thinking that aid should be trimmed back to send a message to the Taliban, although the governments involved did not agree on which budgets to cut”.Īgain, the report did not name the countries in question. It did not name the governments to which it referred. The report – which drew on dozens of interviews with “Afghan and international women activists, current and former Afghan officials, teachers, students, aid workers, human rights defenders, development officials, diplomats, business leaders and other interlocutors” – noted Western governments in the second half of 2022 warned aid agencies of a growing sense of donor fatigue towards Afghanistan. “The most principled response to the Taliban’s misogyny would be finding ways to mitigate the harms inflicted on women and other vulnerable groups.” “However, cutting aid to send a message about women’s rights will only make the situation worse for all Afghans,” he added. “Donors are turning away from Afghanistan, disgusted by the Taliban’s restrictions on women’s basic freedoms,” Graeme Smith, Crisis Group’s Senior Consultant on Afghanistan, said in a statement accompanying the report. That aid, despite being immediately paused in the wake of the group’s rise to power, had resumed amid concerns over widespread hunger and poverty in the country of about 40 million. The moves led to protests and global condemnation, while sounding a possible death knell for the Taliban’s initial openness to engage with the international community following its takeover of the country in August 2021.Īccompanying the Taliban’s clampdown has been a reassessment of international aid from key international government donors, according to the report’s authors. The report, released on Thursday, focused primarily on two Taliban edicts announced in December – the first suspending female education at private and public universities, and the second banning Afghan women from working at local and international NGOs. The contract represents the Taliban government’s first international energy deal, awarding a 15% royalty fee to the Taliban administration and starting with 1,000 tons per day.A new report by Crisis Group warns against international donors cutting aid to Afghanistan in the wake of the Taliban’s curbs on women’s education and ability to work at NGOs, instead arguing for Western countries to find a “liminal space between pariah and legitimate status” to respond to the ongoing humanitarian crisis. The newly announced economic project follows a deal struck by China with Taliban leadership to extract oil from the Amu River Oil Basin. planning and operations countering al-Qaida operatives and Taliban militants, according to CNBC and VOA News. military installation in Afghanistan, Bagram was central to U.S. Bagram is among the bases slated for the new project, Mujahid also confirmed. “Pilot operations” will turn bases in Kabul and northern Afghanistan into economic zones, chief Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid told VOA News. (RELATED: Taliban Bans Afghan Women From Higher Education) “It was decided that the Ministry of Industry and Commerce should progressively take control of the remaining military bases of the foreign forces with the intention of converting them into special economic zones,” said Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, acting deputy prime minister for economic affairs, according to BBC. (Photo by WAKIL KOHSAR/AFP via Getty Images) – The US departure from Bagram has also seen the collapse of the economy same-named nearby town, an illustration of how Afghanistan’s fortunes were so heavily tied to the war and foreign aid. In this photograph taken on August 24, 2022, a chicken vendor drinks tea as he waits for customers in front of his shop in a market near the former US military base in Bagram.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |