Aid groups must navigate sanctions and Taliban to help Afghanistan

The humanitarian sector is warning of a looming crisis in Afghanistan, with 18 million people in need of aid.  

But the ease with which organizations will be able to access populations moving forward for both aid and development programs is still unknown. There are still a lot of adjustments and uncertainties in the wake of the Taliban’s move to national power.

The environment is becoming increasingly violent. Last Thursday, at least 183 people were killed in attacks outside Kabul’s airport. An Islamic State group affiliate, ISIS-K, claimed responsibility. On Sunday, the United States launched a drone strike in Kabul, targeting a vehicle with explosives, which has reportedly killed civilians. On Monday, rockets were fired at the airport as the U.S. scrambles to complete the evacuation of its citizens by the Tuesday deadline.

And delivering aid is already becoming complicated. Last week, the World Health Organization said 500 tonnes of medical supplies could not be delivered because of restrictions at the Kabul airport. But the agency was able to land a plane carrying 12.5 metric tons of medicines and health supplies on Monday, with the help of the Pakistani government at another airport — the Mazar-i-Sharif International Airport in northern Afghanistan. It's the first shipment of this kind to land in the country under Taliban rule, according to the agency.

In response to the upheaval, aid workers said they’ve already had to shift priorities from development programming to humanitarian response.

Budget support from foreign donors, which has been a huge part of how the government paid salaries and carried out services, could also be severed. The World Bank cut financial aid to the country and the International Monetary Fund said it will not release Special Drawing Rights to the country given the situation. Britain has threatened to cut aid, even humanitarian assistance, if the Taliban crossed certain red lines, such as hindering access. Aid flows accounted for 100% of gross domestic product between 2002 and 2009, dropping to about 43% last year.

Sanctions could also impede access. The levels of sanctions placed on the Taliban, and whether quick, formal exemptions are put in place to allow humanitarians to do their job, will play a major role in the ease to which aid organizations can reach populations, said Lindsay Hamsik, senior manager at InterAction, an alliance of international NGOs and partners.

But these are not unchartered waters. Aid groups have worked in areas under Taliban control for decades, including in recent years as the group gained control over rural swaths of Afghanistan, and some have gotten assurances from the Taliban they will be able to continue their work unimpeded. Many groups are also well versed in operating under sanctions regimes, as well as delivering aid in coordination with armed militants in other parts of the world, including in northwest Syria.

“What’s happening in Afghanistan is not new,” Hamsik said. “NGOs respond to life-saving needs wherever civilians are at, regardless of what armed actors are in control or whether those armed actors are recognized or not.”

On Thursday, a spokesperson for the Taliban tweeted that the group met with David Beasley, executive director of the World Food Programme, and assured him that the group will cooperate and provide security to the agency, and that it "appreciated their humanitarian assistance."

The spokesman also tweeted that the delegation met with Markus Potzel, German ambassador to Afghanistan, during which the "German delegation emphasized on continuation of humanitarian assistance to Afghanistan and added that suspended development projects will also be resumed after normalization of situation. The [Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan] delegation appreciated and thanked the Government of Germany for their humanitarian assistance."

Navigating sanctions, and the U.N. assuring donors

The Taliban is already under de-facto sanctions. Plus, assets like central bank deposits in the United States are frozen and will not be available to the Taliban — perhaps a harbinger of what could come. Sanctions are expected to make development assistance more complicated and could even hinder deliveries of humanitarian goods.

As experienced in other settings, sanctions can have severe impacts on life-saving activities by creating bureaucratic hurdles, additional expenses, and delays in the delivery of aid, Hamsik said.

They can also have a chilling effect on commercial services, including banks, which suspend or curtail their financial services, and can complicate the ability of the aid sector to pay for ordinary costs, such as import fees, taxes, road tolls, she added.

Generally, when there is a sanctions regime in place, it requires lengthy, costly processes to secure special exemptions for humanitarians, Hamsik said.

“Those resources could be better spent closest to the community and closest to the community who are in need of assistance,” she said.  

To alleviate this, swift action is needed, Hamsik said, including for the U.S. Treasury and Office of Foreign Assets Control to issue a general license specific to Afghanistan, and to issue guidance and legal assurances to commercial entities and banks, regarding their licensing apparatus as it relates to Afghanistan.

There is also a need for a meaningful dialogue with the NGO community to create broad safeguards within U.S. sanctions and counterterrorism policy that would allow humanitarian action to move forward unimpeded without risk of fees or liabilities.

The U.S. Treasury Department has given humanitarian organizations informal assurances that they can operate despite the sanctions, but there has been a push by aid groups for formal guidelines.

These exemptions are critical to humanitarian responses. For example, in Somalia, U.N. Security Council sanctions on al-Shabab include a humanitarian exemption that keeps aid work in compliance with sanctions. But in 2019, a proposal from the Kenyan government to add the group to the same sanctions list as al-Qaeda and the Islamic State group included criminal penalties for humanitarian aid if it is considered to support terrorists. There was concern these sanctions could scare donors into severing emergency funding and could cut the flow of funds from banks to aid groups.

At the time, a group of former American diplomats, national security officials, and humanitarian leaders wrote to members of the U.S. government urging them to reject the proposal, saying it could “exacerbate the dire humanitarian situation and put hundreds of thousands if not millions of people at grave risk.” The proposal did not move forward.

One international NGO official working in northwest Syria, who requested anonymity, told Devex that its operations in northwest Syria are heavily affected by sprawling sanctions on the government and counterterrorism sanctions on Hayat Tahrir al-Sham — an offshoot of al-Qaeda which is currently the most dominant armed group in northwest Syria. 

The official added that amid the COVID-19 pandemic, their team struggled to provide online education since the main phone and service provider in Syria is sanctioned. “It was hard for us to provide tablets or phones. It took us months of discussion with experts before we finally abandoned the idea,” the official said.  

InterAction’s Hamsik said her organization has previously asked the U.S. government to issue a broad global license that safeguards humanitarian action in all circumstances where sanctions regimes exist, but the U.S. government has not recognized or responded to those requests.

The United Nations is also expected to play a critical role in access, said Mohamad Katoub, former press and advocacy officer for an NGO operating in Syria, adding that U.N agencies make donors comfortable with providing funding. He said that if countries get criticized by the media about their operations in a country, “the governments can just say that they give the money to the U.N. — it relaxes them.”

Yakzan Shishakly, chief executive officer of the Maram Foundation, which provides food and non-food relief to Syrians in the northwest echoed this, saying the foundation leans heavily on the U.N.’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs when there are disputes with armed militants.  

Better understanding, adapting to aid

While the nuances of each country differ greatly, the aid sector can draw upon some of the experiences from the Syrian conflict to provide insight into what could evolve under a Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. This includes engagement with Hayat Tahrir al-Sham — a group that views the Taliban as a model that it strives to emulate.  

In northwest Syria, aid was perceived as a threat by extremist and Jihadi groups because Western donors channeled aid money to civil society organizations and local councils to explicitly counterbalance factions such as HTS, said Aron Lund, an expert on Syria and a fellow with The Century Foundation.

Ever since HTS seized near-absolute control of Syria’s northwest in July 2019, the armed group has grown aware that on practical terms, it needs aid to govern, Lund said. Without that cash flow, the area would become ungovernable.

In Syria, HTS set up a “‘Salvation Government” in 2019. While HTS claims this government is independent, they support it and it serves as their public body, Lund said. After its creation, more informed requests came from HTS — indicating the group is now more experienced with humanitarian responses, according to the INGO official.

“HTS has also become more conscious that without relief and aid, the population may not accept their control anymore. Supporting aid delivery is in their own interest,” the official said.

The Taliban has also evolved. Their forces have had control or significant influence in many parts of the country already, enforcing laws and regulations, according to a Human Rights Watch report published last year. Some NGOs, receiving international funding, have already worked with the just-ousted government in Afghanistan to provide services, such as health care and education in these areas. Taliban fighters have overseen some of these services and coordinated with NGOs, local government officials, and community elders.

“As the Taliban have increasingly sought to present themselves as a government, they have increasingly overseen education, health, and other services and interact with aid organizations,” according to the report. But it noted that residents in districts under Taliban control in Helmand Province said NGOs continue to receive threats “particularly if they receive foreign aid or are involved in government contracts in other parts of the country.”

In some Taliban-controlled areas, NGOs have implemented community-based education programs, including for girls, but there are very few Taliban officials that permit girls to attend school past puberty, according to HRW. The group has also forced “taxes” on teachers’ salaries.

Update, Aug. 30. 2021: This article has been updated with extra reporting that WHO was able to land a plane carrying medicines and health supplies at the Mazar-i-Sharif International Airport in northern Afghanistan on Monday.