UN’s $5 billion aid appeal puts a number on Afghanistan’s ‘unfolding nightmare’

Afghans who are unable, or unwilling, to join the tide of refugees are left to scrape by amid the bleakest winter in recent memory, enduring chronic shortages of food, fuel and medicine. (©FAO/Alberto TrilloBarca/Alessio Romenzi)
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Updated 27 January 2022
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UN’s $5 billion aid appeal puts a number on Afghanistan’s ‘unfolding nightmare’

  • When the Taliban seized power last summer, the country lost access to aid, loans and assets worth $9.5 billion 
  • Many international donors remain reluctant to send aid to Afghanistan, fearing it might empower the Taliban

DUBAI: Since the Taliban seized control of Afghanistan in August last year amid a chaotic US military withdrawal, the war-battered country has slid deeper into disaster, sparking fresh waves of displacement and raising the specter of mass hunger.

Deprived of billions of dollars in aid, loans and assets by an international community reluctant to recognize the new, ultraconservative government in Kabul, Afghanistan is fast becoming the world’s worst and most complex humanitarian emergency.

Afghans who are unable, or unwilling, to join the tide of refugees are left to scrape by amid the bleakest winter in recent memory, enduring chronic shortages of food, fuel and medicine.

But even the 5.7 million Afghans who have fled to five neighboring countries (Iran, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan) still need vital relief.

The gloom deepened when at least 22 people died and hundreds of buildings were damaged after twin earthquakes struck the isolated western province of Badghis on Jan. 17.

In response to the deteriorating situation from every perspective, the UN launched a $5 billion aid appeal on Jan. 11 — the largest ever for a country experiencing a humanitarian crisis — to help shore up basic services during the bitterly cold winter.

In an urgent plea on Jan. 13, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned of “a nightmare unfolding” in Afghanistan unless further funding is released. “Virtually every man, woman and child could face acute poverty,” he said.

Many in the international community have been reluctant to send aid to Afghanistan, fearing it might empower the Taliban, a group whose extreme interpretation of Islam denies girls an education, bars women from the workplace, and limits freedom of expression.




Beneficiaries work their land around Ghra village in Daman district south of Kandahar. (©FAO/Alessio Romenzi)

When the Taliban toppled the UN-backed government of Ashraf Ghani last summer, it lost access to billions of dollars in financing from the World Bank and the IMF, saw its assets frozen, and development aid abruptly suspended.

Additionally, the administration of President Joe Biden froze $7 billion in Afghan foreign reserves held in New York.

Despite 20 years of Western intervention, successive Afghan governments had failed to diversify the economy beyond rudimentary agriculture. In fact, almost 80 percent of the previous government’s budget came from the US and other foreign donors. Denied this assistance, the nation’s economy now teeters on the brink of collapse.

Policymakers around the world have been left wondering how to address the unfolding emergency without giving the Taliban the oxygen of legitimacy. As such, Washington has sought to bypass the group by directly channeling funds though UN agencies.




FAO staff members Baryal Mumtaz and Feroz Aryan help a beneficiary put his sack of improved wheat seeds on his shoulders. (©FAO/Alessio Romenzi)

On Jan. 11, the United States Agency for International Development announced more than $308 million in additional assistance, bringing total US humanitarian spending on Afghanistan and Afghan refugees in the region to nearly $782 million since Oct. 2020.

Campaigners caution that increasing aid contributions is not a sustainable solution, and that Afghans will only achieve lasting security and financial independence when they regain access to their bank accounts and hard currency.

Masuda Sultan is an Afghan women’s rights activist and a co-founder of Unfreeze Afghanistan, an advocacy group established in Sept. 2021 to lobby policymakers on behalf of ordinary Afghans deprived of their savings by the chaos in the banking system attributable to the sanctions regime.

She acknowledges that there has been some progress. “The UN announced its largest humanitarian funding appeal in its history, and last week the US announced $308 million in additional humanitarian aid on top of the $474 already committed,” Sultan told Arab News.

“But without addressing the underlying economic freeze related to the banking sector, which is a result of sanctions, the needs of the Afghan people can never be met. In fact, the number of people needing emergency humanitarian assistance will just grow.”




Noor Mohammad applies fungicide to the certified wheat seeds provided by FAO before sowing in Sahibzada Kalacha village, Daman district, of Kandahar, Afghanistan on 8 November 2021. (©FAO/Hashim Azizi)

Aware of the growing pressure on Washington to release Afghanistan’s frozen assets, Zabihullah Mujahid, the spokesperson for the Taliban government, recently posted a message on Twitter that said: “The United States must respond positively to the international voice and release Afghan capital.”

Cheryl Benard, another of Unfreeze Afghanistan’s co-founders and the president of ARCH International, an organization in Washington dedicated to the preservation of cultural heritage in conflict zones, said giving Afghans access to their savings would prevent a currency collapse and allow them to develop their communities independently.

“The bottom line is this is a post-conflict country,” Benard told Arab News. “In Germany (after the Second World War), we had the Marshall Plan and it helped them become a normal country again and rebuild their livelihoods.

“In the case of Afghanistan, they have the money themselves, $9 billion, and we are holding it back and are instead raising new donor funds. But this was exactly what ruined the Afghan experiment for the past 20 years: We kept them dependent on foreign experts and foreign funding. What they need now is to get on their own feet — and they want to.”

FASTFACTS

* UN agencies say 22.8 million Afghans are experiencing acute hunger and food insecurity.

* US, World Bank and IMF urged to unfreeze Afghan assets, loans and aid packages.

Under the sanctions regime imposed on Afghanistan, individuals, nongovernmental organizations and owners of small businesses cannot access savings held in foreign banks because Western powers are worried the Taliban might try to appropriate the money.

Benard said this could be prevented by releasing the money “in small monthly amounts and if they try to take it, you can always freeze it again. You don’t give them $9 billion all at once.”

The money could go directly to the Afghan central bank, where it would be regulated by law, before it is distributed to Afghan savers through currency exchanges across the country.

“This is totally normal,” said Benard. “What is not normal is for the US to say, ‘We don’t like the outcome of the war, so we are freezing your money.’”




Beneficiary Niaz Mohammad shows how the pomegranates he has harvested don't ripen in his orchard around Ghra village in Daman district south of Kandahar. After realising that the lack of irrigation didn't let his pomegranate trees grow, Niaz decided to fell his orchard and plant instead wheat that needs of less water. (©FAO/Alessio Romenzi)

Shakib Noori, US-based director of sustainable development at AMS, told Arab News the best solution for Afghanistan is to ensure aid remains “apolitical and not a carrot-or-stick tool of the Western world to coerce the Taliban.”

However, he said it is also important “to ensure that the current regime in Kabul does not benefit from the flow of the humanitarian assistance designated specifically for the ordinary residents of Afghanistan.”

Aid agencies said banking is not the only sector in need of support to stave off economic collapse. According to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization, a crucial way to support the Afghan people is to shore up agriculture, which forms the backbone of the nation’s economy and its food security.

“Afghanistan is now one of the world’s largest and most severe hunger crises,” Rein Paulsen, director of the FAO’s Office of Emergencies and Resilience, told Arab News.




Khialy Gul’s neighbor girls carry wheat bunches at a field in Nawju village, Kuz Kunar district of Nangarhar, Afghanistan on 10 May 2021. (©FAO/Farshad Usyan)

“Half the population — 22.8 million people — are confronting acute hunger and food insecurity at the moment. Not only do they not know where their next meal may be coming from, but a majority of them are also agriculture-reliant, rural families who are being forced to make horrific choices about whether to stay in their homes or to walk away from their livelihoods in search of aid elsewhere.

“Unless we tackle the causes that underlie this crisis, we can expect things to continue to get worse. This crisis is the result of a combination of factors but one key factor involves the underlying vulnerabilities that affect what is the bedrock of Afghanistan’s economy and food security: agriculture.”

Agriculture accounts for 25 percent of Afghanistan’s gross domestic product, 70 percent of Afghans directly rely on domestic agricultural production for their food or income, and 80 percent receive some sort of economic benefit from the sector.

“The criticality of agriculture in the country simply cannot be overstated,” said Paulsen. “Paradoxically, the people most affected right now by Afghanistan’s hunger crisis are its food producers.

“Out of the 22.8 million Afghans (faced with hunger and food insecurity), the largest share — 17.8 million people — reside in rural areas and depend primarily on agriculture.”

Sultan of Unfreeze Afghanistan summed up the situation bluntly: Afghanistan is falling off a cliff, with the economic shock of losing 45 percent of GDP overnight. If the banking sector collapses, a further 30 percent of GDP could be lost.

The US and other countries are going to have to “work with current Afghan authorities, despite the fraught history and long war,” if they hope to avert further suffering, she added.


UK government appoints former Blair negotiator Jonathan Powell as national security adviser

Updated 09 November 2024
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UK government appoints former Blair negotiator Jonathan Powell as national security adviser

  • Powell, who was chief of staff to former PM Tony Blair from 1997 to 2007, was an architect of the Northern Ireland peace process
  • He faced criticism for his part in the UK’s decision to participate in the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq

LONDON: The UK’s Labour government has appointed Jonathan Powell, an architect of the Northern Ireland peace process, as its new national security adviser.

Powell, who served as chief of staff to former Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair for a decade between 1997 and 2007, was deeply involved in the UK’s decision to participate in the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq.

In 2014, Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron appointed him the UK’s special envoy to Libya, in an attempt to promote dialogue between rival factions embroiled in the nation’s civil war.

Many political figures in the UK welcomed Powell’s latest appointment at a time of escalating international conflicts. Some expressed hopes that he will be able to help British authorities forge a positive relationship with Donald Trump when he takes over as US president in January.

However, Powell faced criticism for his role in the UK government’s decision to join the invasion of Iraq two decades ago, and for later promoting the need to engage in dialogue with extremist groups. In 2014, at the height of Daesh’s bloody occupation of large swaths of Iraq and Syria, he argued that UK authorities should open channels of communication with them.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer said Powell’s experience of negotiating the Northern Ireland peace agreement and his other work related to some of the world’s most complex conflicts make him “uniquely qualified to advise the government on tackling the challenges ahead, and engage with counterparts across the globe to protect and advance UK interests.”

Powell said he was honored to be given the role at a time when “national security, international relations and domestic policies are so interconnected.”


Trump’s shunning of transition planning may have severe consequences, governance group says

Updated 09 November 2024
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Trump’s shunning of transition planning may have severe consequences, governance group says

  • Trump's transition team have yet to sign agreements required by the Presidential Transition Act, which mandates that the president-elect’s team agree to an ethics plan and to limit and disclose private donations
  • The delay is holding up the federal government’s ability to begin processing security clearances for potentially hundreds of Trump administration national security appointees

WASHINGTON: A good-governance group is warning of severe consequences if President-elect Donald Trump continues to steer clear of formal transition planning with the Biden administration — inaction that it says is already limiting the federal government’s ability to provide security clearances and briefings to the incoming administration.
Without the planning, says Max Stier, president and CEO of the nonprofit Partnership for Public Service, “it would not be possible” to “be ready to govern on day one.”
The president-elect’s transition is being led by Cantor Fitzgerald CEO Howard Lutnick and Linda McMahon, the former wrestling executive who led the Small Business Administration during Trump’s first term. They said last month that they expected to sign agreements beginning the formal transition process with the Biden White House and the General Services Administration, which acts essentially as the federal government’s landlord.
But those agreements are still unsigned, and the pressure is beginning to mount.
The delay is holding up the federal government’s ability to begin processing security clearances for potentially hundreds of Trump administration national security appointees. That could limit the staff who could work on sensitive information by Inauguration Day on Jan. 20.
It also means Trump appointees can’t yet access federal facilities, documents and personnel to prepare for taking office.
The agreements are required by the Presidential Transition Act, which was enacted in 2022. They mandate that the president-elect’s team agree to an ethics plan and to limit and disclose private donations.
In that act, Congress set deadlines of Sept. 1 for the GSA agreement and Oct. 1 for the White House agreement, in an effort to ensure that incoming administrations are prepared to govern when they enter office. Both deadlines have long since come and gone.
Stier, whose organization works with candidates and incumbents on transitions, said on a call with reporters on Friday that a new administration “walks in with the responsibility of taking over the most complex operation on the planet.”
“In order to do that effectively, they absolutely need to have done a lot of prework,” he said, adding that Trump’s team “has approached this in a, frankly, different way than any other prior transition has.”
“They have, up until now, walked past all of the tradition and, we believe, vital agreements with the federal government,” Stier said.
In a statement this week, Lutnick and McMahon said Trump was “selecting personnel to serve our nation under his leadership and enact policies that make the life of Americans affordable, safe, and secure.” They didn’t mention signing agreements to begin the transition.
A person familiar with the matter said that the congressionally mandated ethics disclosures and contribution limits were factors in the hesitance to sign the agreements.
Trump transition spokesperson Brian Hughes said Friday that the team’s “lawyers continue to constructively engage with the Biden-Harris Administration lawyers regarding all agreements contemplated by the Presidential Transition Act.”
“We will update you once a decision is made,” Hughes said.
The Trump team’s reluctance has persisted despite Biden’s White House chief of staff, Jeff Zients, reaching out to Lutnick and McMahon to reiterate the important role the agreements with the Biden administration and GSA play in beginning a presidential transition.
“We’re here to assist. We want to have a peaceful transition of power,” said White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre. “We want to make sure they have what they need.”
The unorthodox approach to the presidential transition process recalls the period immediately after Trump’s Election Day victory in 2016. Days later, the president-elect fired the head of his transition team, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, and tossed out a transition playbook he’d been compiling.
But Stier said that, even then, Trump’s team had signed the initial agreements that allowed the transition to get started — something that hasn’t happened this time.
“The story’s not finished. But they’re late,” he said. “And even if they manage to get these agreements in now, they’re late in getting those done.”


50 countries warn UN of ransomware attacks on hospitals

Updated 09 November 2024
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50 countries warn UN of ransomware attacks on hospitals

  • The statement also condemned nations which “knowingly” allow those responsible for ransomware attacks to operate from

UN: The World Health Organization and some 50 countries issued a warning Friday at the United Nations about the rise of ransomware attacks against hospitals, with the United States specifically blaming Russia.
Ransomware is a type of digital blackmail in which hackers encrypt the data of victims — individuals, companies or institutions — and demand money as a “ransom” in order to restore it.
Such attacks on hospitals “can be issues of life and death,” according to WHO head Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who addressed the UN Security Council during a meeting Friday called by the United States.
“Surveys have shown that attacks on the health care sector have increased in both scale and frequency,” Ghebreyesus said, emphasizing the importance of international cooperation to combat them.
“Cybercrime, including ransomware, poses a serious threat to international security,” he added, calling on the Security Council to consider it as such.
A joint statement co-signed by over 50 countries — including South Korea, Ukraine, Japan, Argentina, France, Germany and the United Kingdom — offered a similar warning.
“These attacks pose direct threats to public safety and endanger human lives by delaying critical health care services, cause significant economic harm, and can pose a threat to international peace and security,” read the statement, shared by US Deputy National Security Adviser Anne Neuberger.
The statement also condemned nations which “knowingly” allow those responsible for ransomware attacks to operate from.
At the meeting, Neuberger directly called out Moscow, saying: “Some states — most notably Russia — continue to allow ransomware actors to operate from their territory with impunity.”
France and South Korea also pointed the finger at North Korea.
Russia defended itself by claiming the Security Council was not the appropriate forum to address cybercrime.
“We believe that today’s meeting can hardly be deemed a reasonable use of the Council’s time and resources,” said Russian ambassador Vassili Nebenzia.
“If our Western colleagues wish to discuss the security of health care facilities,” he continued, “they should agree in the Security Council upon specific steps to stop the horrific... attacks by Israel on hospitals in the Gaza Strip.”


China summons Philippine ambassador over new maritime laws

Updated 09 November 2024
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China summons Philippine ambassador over new maritime laws

  • Laws aimed at reinforcing Philippine rights to territory, resources
  • China unlikely to recognize laws, senator says

BEIJING/MANILA: China summoned the Philippines’ ambassador on Friday to express its objection to two new laws in the Southeast Asian nation asserting maritime rights and sovereignty over disputed areas of the South China Sea, its foreign ministry said.
China made “solemn representations” to the ambassador shortly after Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. signed the Maritime Zones Act and the Archipelagic Sea Lanes Act into law to strengthen his country’s maritime claims and bolster its territorial integrity.
The Maritime Zones law “illegally includes most of China’s Huangyan Island and Nansha Islands and related maritime areas in the Philippines’ maritime zones,” Beijing’s foreign ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said, using the Chinese names for Scarborough Shoal and the Spratly Islands respectively.
Beijing has rejected a 2016 ruling by The Hague-based Permanent Court of Arbitration which said its expansive maritime claims over the South China Sea had no legal basis, in a case that was brought by Manila. The United States, a Philippine ally, backs the court’s ruling.
Marcos said the two laws he signed, which define maritime entitlements and set designated sea lanes and air routes, were a demonstration of commitment to uphold the international rules-based order, and protect Manila’s rights to exploit resources peacefully in its exclusive economic zone (EEZ).
“Our people, especially our fisher folk, should be able to pursue their livelihood free from uncertainty and harassment,” Marcos said. “We must be able to harness mineral and energy resources in our sea bed.”
But Beijing said the laws were a “serious infringement” of its claims over the contested areas.
“China urges the Philippine side to effectively respect China’s territorial sovereignty and maritime rights and interests, to immediately stop taking any unilateral actions that may lead to the widening of the dispute and complicate the situation,” Mao said.
China, which also has sovereignty disputes with the other countries in the region, has enacted domestic laws covering the South China Sea, such as a coast guard law in 2021 that allows it to detain foreigners suspected of trespassing.
Beijing, which uses an armada of coast guard ships to assert its claims, routinely accuses vessels of trespassing in areas of the South China Sea that fall inside the EEZs of its neighbors, and has clashed repeatedly with the Philippines in the past year.
Philippine officials acknowledged the challenges they face in implementing the new laws, with one author, Senator Francis Tolentino, saying he did not expect a reduction in tensions.
“China will not recognize these, but the imprimatur that we’ll be getting from the international community would strengthen our position,” Tolentino told a press conference.
The United States on Friday backed the Philippines.
“The passage of the Maritime Zones Act by the Philippines is a routine matter and further clarifies Philippine maritime law,” State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said in a statement.


Chad accuses Sudan of aiding rebel forces

Updated 09 November 2024
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Chad accuses Sudan of aiding rebel forces

LIBREVILLE: Chad on Friday accused Sudan of arming and financing rebel groups on Chadian territory with the aim of destabilising its neighbor.
Chad claims Sudan is aiding a rebellion by members of the Zaghawa ethnic group operating out of Sudan’s southwestern El Facher region.
“Sudan is financing and arming terrorist groups operating in the sub-region with the aim of destabilising Chad,” foreign affairs minister and government spokesman Abderaman Koulamallah said in a press release.
The Zaghawa rebels based in Sudan are led by Ousman Dillo, the younger brother of Chadian opposition leader Yaya Dillo Djerou, who was killed by Chadian military forces earlier this year.
In February 2008, a Zaghawa rebel group based in Sudan launched a lightning offensive in Chad along with other groups, forcing former president Idriss Deby Itno to take refuge in his presidential palace, before he was able to repel them with help from France.
In 2021, Idriss Deby Itno died fighting other rebel forces near the border with Libya and the army named his son Mahamat Idriss Deby as president.
Sudan’s government has accused Chad of meddling in its own civil war by helping to deliver weapons from the United Arab Emirates to the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) paramilitary forces, which Chad and the UAE have denied.
The Sudanese war, which pits the army against the RSF, broke out in April 2023 and has killed tens of thousands of people and displaced more than 11 million, including 3.1 million who are now sheltering beyond the country’s borders, monitors say.