Pakistan’s minister of state for foreign affairs, Hina Rabbani Khar, has laid blame for the economic and humanitarian situation in Afghanistan at the feet of the international community.
In some ways, foreign powers seem to have “intentionally” enabled the collapse of the Afghan economy, she said at a briefing during the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, on Monday. U.S. President Joe Biden’s decision to freeze Afghanistan’s federal reserves held in the U.S. played a big part, she added.
“Enabling their collapse is not smart. Who will go and fix it?” Khar said.
EU limits education funding as 'leverage' over Taliban
The move is a response to the Taliban preventing teenage girls from attending school and ordering women to cover their faces in public.
And now the Taliban and the international community are engaged in brinkmanship, she said. Foreign governments have refused to engage and have stood by their principles, while Taliban rulers have said they are not receiving assistance and “so now … we will do worse to our own population,” according to Khar.
EU delegations that have visited Pakistan have said they are not permitted to engage with the Taliban leadership because of its stance on women’s and girls’ education, Khar said.
“You would therefore have them starve because principally you believe they must get educated,” she added.
She dismissed a question about Pakistan’s role in harboring Taliban leaders, who forcibly took control of Afghanistan in August. ”Where Pakistan stands … [gets] lost in translation,” and the country is judged based on actions it must take because of its geography, Khar said.
Khar’s remarks appeared to create tension with United Nations Development Programme Administrator Achim Steiner, who shared the stage. Steiner said that UNDP and other organizations that continue to work in Afghanistan have to define new terms of engagement and find ways to support the Afghan people without working with the Taliban government.
“It was a grave misjudgment that the Taliban have not fulfilled the commitment” they made to the Afghan people and the international community that girls could attend school, Steiner said. UNDP is working to stabilize the economy by supporting small-scale enterprises and livelihood programs, among other initiatives, he said.
About the author
Adva Saldinger@AdvaSal
Adva Saldinger is a Senior Reporter at Devex where she covers development finance, as well as U.S. foreign aid policy. Adva explores the role the private sector and private capital play in development and authors the weekly Devex Invested newsletter bringing the latest news on the role of business and finance in addressing global challenges. A journalist with more than 10 years of experience, she has worked at several newspapers in the U.S. and lived in both Ghana and South Africa.