Presented by World Food Program USA
Today we mark one year since the Taliban completed its takeover of Afghanistan amid the departure of U.S.-led forces — with much of their aid funding leaving with them.
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As Kabul fell in August 2021, those still in the country and people overseas scrambled to help Afghans, who suddenly found themselves at risk of Taliban reprisals for working with the United States and its allies.
While much attention was given to Afghans who had cooperated with NATO militaries, many at risk were development workers. They helped the country achieve some fragile but significant gains over the past two decades, from improving childhood mortality metrics to building key services and infrastructure. Their struggle to gain sanctuary in the West continues, with many still facing bureaucratic hurdles.
Meanwhile, much of the progress Afghanistan made in establishing a functional economy and strengthening women’s rights quickly crumbled. The prospect of backsliding into conflict is an ever-present threat — as demonstrated by the recent U.S. assassination of al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahri in Kabul and ongoing concerns about the Islamic State group.
The Taliban government, still not officially recognized internationally, stopped receiving budget support and development aid, slamming the brakes on projects and institutions across the country. A slew of sanctions remains in place, effectively grinding the banking sector to a halt, with repercussions for the delivery of humanitarian aid — even though the U.S. Treasury eventually made carve-outs to relieve the pressure.
Afghanistan was isolated from the international financial system, with more than $9 billion worth of assets frozen — around $7 billion in the U.S. And without a functional central bank, the country has no monetary policy to fight inflation and defend the currency. The U.S. and the Taliban are in talks about how some of the overseas reserves could be used for Afghanistan, potentially through a trust fund.
“We are able to do all humanitarian work. But if we're not able to address the root causes of the economic crisis, in 10 years we might still be here distributing food and items and cash. This is absolutely unsustainable,” Melissa Cornet, an advocacy officer with CARE, tells my colleague Shabtai Gold from Afghanistan’s Khost province — whose woes were recently compounded by a 5.9 magnitude earthquake in June. Her colleague Ibraheem Naman in Kabul named the sanctions as the main hurdle for the country’s stagnant economy.
Afghanistan’s fragile political and economic context coincides with a global food crisis. As the economy spirals, poverty is on the rise and food prices are increasing, leaving much of the population unable to afford a sufficient diet.
The World Food Programme estimates that 92% of the country’s 41.7 million people are food-insecure — one of the highest rates of any country — and 18.9 million Afghans face life-threatening hunger levels, including 1.1 million children who risk dying without emergency treatment.
Unemployment is widespread and might reach 40% this year, according to the United Nations, in part because government jobs simply disappeared when foreign budget aid suddenly dried up last year.
Read: Why the food crisis might get worse before anything gets better
Number crunching: What the data says about hunger and the food crisis (Pro)
Climate change has compounded these problems, as more droughts and flash floods destroy smallholder crops that in previous years would have made up for what Afghans were unable to buy. That’s not the only environmental threat: The June earthquake killed more than 1,000 people, stretching relief agencies.
Meanwhile, humanitarian funding for this year currently amounts to less than half of what is needed. This gap is expected to decrease the reach of food aid from 38% to 8% of the population, according to the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification.
Despite the scale of need, humanitarian funding for Afghanistan has fallen short. In April, Devex data specialist Miguel Antonio Tamonan revealed an important trend: Even before the Taliban takeover, development spending was falling, though humanitarian aid was rising.
Dealing with Afghanistan’s problems calls for some political creativity, according to aid workers. Cornet noted that NGOs are “doing a lot of advocacy” in Europe and the U.S. in a bid to “address the root causes of the economic crisis.”
What happens next will partly depend on how Western governments reconcile Afghanistan’s aid needs with the Taliban’s approach to human rights, particularly for women and girls. My colleague Vince Chadwick recently reported on the European Union’s attempts to influence the Taliban by restricting education funding until girls are allowed back at school. But some NGOs worried that the EU’s move amounted to the “collective punishment” of all Afghan children.
Someone familiar with education under the Taliban — or the lack thereof — is Hosna Jalil, the first woman appointed to a senior position in the Interior Ministry. In an intimate interview with Devex in June, she described her childhood education in a covert NGO program under the previous Taliban government — and made the case for an updated version to run again.
Read: The state of humanitarian aid in Afghanistan (Pro)
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Catch up on the situation:
• WFP’s Afghanistan chief ‘terrified’ as hunger and despair mount
• Sanctions and banks make it a struggle to get money into Afghanistan
• EU limits education funding as 'leverage' over Taliban
• 70% of Afghan households can't meet basic needs: World Bank survey
• Hosna Jalil: How aid groups failed to build capacity in Afghanistan
+ Find all our Afghanistan coverage here.
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Shabtai Gold contributed to this edition of Devex Newswire.
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