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.


Fifteen inmates killed in new Ecuador jail massacre

Updated 12 November 2024
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Fifteen inmates killed in new Ecuador jail massacre

  • “Serious incidents were reported between inmates, resulting in a preliminary toll of 15 dead and 14 wounded,” the prison service said
  • The prison service said that a “significant contingent” of troops and police had been deployed to restore order at the prison, which was now under the “full control” of the authorities

GUAYAQUIL, Ecuador: At least 15 inmates were killed and 14 injured in clashes Tuesday at a prison in the Ecuadoran port of Guayaquil, the latest in a series of massacres blamed on a war between drug cartels.
Once seen as a beacon of stability in South America, Ecuador has become one of the world’s most violent nations and a major drug trafficking hub in recent years.
Much of the violence has taken place in prisons where more than 460 inmates have been killed since February 2021, often in gruesome fashion, with their bodies dismembered and burnt.
The latest bloodshed took place in Litoral penitentiary, the country’s biggest, where 119 inmates were killed in September 2021 in Ecuador’s worst prison massacre.
“This morning, in a pavilion of the Litoral penitentiary, serious incidents were reported between inmates, resulting in a preliminary toll of 15 dead and 14 wounded,” the prison service said.
AFP drone images of the prison yard showed inmates in orange prison garb placing a body on the ground next to a dozen corpses wrapped in blankets.
In another part of the prison, dozens of prisoners could be seen sitting in rows, guarded by security force members.
The prison service said that a “significant contingent” of troops and police had been deployed to restore order at the prison, which was now under the “full control” of the authorities.
The violence in Ecuador’s prisons has spilled over onto the streets.
The Andean country registered a record 47 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants in 2023, up from a rate of six per 100,000 in 2018.
In January, the violence reached a new peak following the jailbreak of a powerful narco boss, Jose Adolfo Macias.
In the most dramatic incident, gunmen stormed the studios of a television station in Guayaquil and held a presenter at gunpoint live on air.
Gang members also took scores of prison guards hostage and set off explosions prompting President Daniel Noboa to declare war on organized crime and deploy the army to combat the gangs.
Tuesday’s massacre is the first at a prison since then.
But tit-for-tat gang attacks left at least 17 dead near Guayaquil last month and prison officials continue to be targeted.
Five penitentiary staff were shot dead in the space of a month between late August and late September.
The victims included the director of Litoral, who was shot dead after her car was ambushed while traveling near Guayaquil and the head of another prison in the Amazonian province of Sucumbios, who too was shot dead while traveling by car.
Noboa claims his offensive against organized crime is nonetheless yielding results.
Between January and September, 4,236 murders were reported, down from 5,112 for the same period in 2023.


Spanish flood-hit towns brace for another storm

Updated 12 November 2024
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Spanish flood-hit towns brace for another storm

  • AEMET forecasts as much as 120 mm of rain in 12 hours
  • While the storm is not expected to be as powerful, it could be devastating for the towns that are still recovering

MADRID: Flood-hit towns near the eastern city of Valencia were rushing on Tuesday to clear the sewage system of mud and debris, pile sandbags and cancel school classes as they prepared for another approaching storm.
Two weeks after the worst floods in Spain’s modern history killed more than 200 people, national weather service AEMET issued an orange alert, the second-highest, for strong or torrential rains expected on Wednesday in the same area.
AEMET forecasts as much as 120 mm (4.7 inches) of rain in 12 hours. While the storm is not expected to be as powerful, it could be devastating for the towns that are still recovering.
The impact of the rain could be severe because of the quantities of mud already on the ground and because of the condition of the sewage system, Rosa Tauris, a spokesperson for Valencia’s emergency committee, told reporters.
Thousands of workers are cleaning buildings while removing the mud that accumulated on roads and sidewalks and clogged the sewage pipes and drains in towns and suburbs around Valencia.
The emergency committee issued a special warning requesting that municipalities and organizations take preventive measures, including closing schools.
Tauris recommended citizens work remotely when possible, avoid non-essential travel and follow emergency services’ updates.
The town council of Chiva, one of the worst-hit sites, canceled classes and sports activities, while in nearby Aldaia, workers piled up sandbags to protect the town.
“We are placing sandbags to replace the floodgates that the previous floods tore down,” municipal worker Antonio Ojeda said, hoping this would prevent the Saleta ravine from overflowing again.
They are also cleaning the ditches and drains that are obstructed with trees, tires and car parts.
On Monday, 10,000 tons of furniture, appliances and clothing were removed, almost as much waste as Valencia disposes of in a year.
Valencian authorities suspended classes and activities at recreational centers in the flood-hit suburbs, advising volunteers who flocked to the area to help clean up to avoid travel.
The AEMET’s weather alerts cover much of the Mediterranean coast of Catalonia, Valencia and Andalusia and the Balearic Islands.


Court delays decision on sentencing Trump to November 19

Updated 12 November 2024
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Court delays decision on sentencing Trump to November 19

  • Ahead of election, Trump’s lawyers moved to have case thrown out
  • Trump’s legal team almost certain to seek to oppose or delay any sentencing

NEW YORK: The judge in Donald Trump’s New York criminal case has delayed to November 19 a decision on potentially throwing out the US president-elect’s conviction, the court said Tuesday.
Trump was convicted of 34 felony counts in May after a jury found he had fraudulently manipulated business records to cover up an alleged sexual encounter with a porn star ahead of the 2016 election.
The president-elect is due to be sentenced on November 26, may receive a reprieve if Judge Juan Merchan decides to dismiss the case following the Supreme Court’s recent ruling on presidential immunity.
That landmark ruling saw the court, with a 6-3 conservative majority, decide that presidents have sweeping immunity from prosecution for a range of official acts committed while in office.
Ahead of the election, Trump’s lawyers moved to have the case thrown out in light of the Supreme Court decision, a move that prosecutors have firmly rejected.
If the judge throws out the case on that basis, there will be no sentencing of Trump, 78.
If he does not, Trump’s legal team would almost certainly seek to oppose or delay any sentencing, insisting it would interfere with Trump’s role as commander-in-chief once he is sworn in on January 20.
“The joint application for a stay of the current deadlines... until November 19, is granted,” the court wrote in an email to parties in the case, seen by AFP.
Alongside the New York case, brought by state-level prosecutors, Trump faces two active federal cases, one related to his effort to overturn the 2020 election and the other connected to classified documents he allegedly mishandled after leaving office.
However, as president, he would be able to intervene to end those cases, and Jack Smith, the special counsel handling both cases, has reportedly begun to wind them down.
A Trump-appointed federal judge already threw out the documents case, but Smith had sought to appeal that decision.
“Trump’s victory means he is unlikely to be held accountable for any of his alleged criminal misconduct,” said former prosecutor Randall Eliason in an article on Substack.
“That’s a severe blow to the ideal of the rule of law.”
The New York conviction, coming just months before an election that Trump won convincingly, was one of several dramatic developments in the race for the White House.
In July, Trump survived an assassination attempt at a rally in Pennsylvania when a bullet grazed his ear.
Later that month, President Joe Biden stepped aside as the Democratic Party’s candidate following a disastrous performance against Trump in a televised debate.
That paved the way for Vice President Kamala Harris to become the first woman of color from a major US party to stand for president.


Driver rams his car into crowd in China, killing 35, as police say he was upset about his divorce

Updated 12 November 2024
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Driver rams his car into crowd in China, killing 35, as police say he was upset about his divorce

  • Police detained the 62-year-old man, who is being treated for wounds thought to be self-inflicted, shortly after the attack
  • He was dissatisfied with the split of financial assets in his divorce, according to a preliminary investigation, police said

ZHUHAI, China: A man who authorities said was upset over his divorce settlement rammed his car into a crowd of people exercising at a sports complex in southern China, killing 35 and severely injuring dozens of others, police said Tuesday.
Police detained the 62-year-old man, who is being treated for wounds thought to be self-inflicted, shortly after the attack Monday night in the southern Chinese city of Zhuhai. The city is hosting the People’s Liberation Army’s annual aviation exhibition, which opened Tuesday, and searches for what happened were heavily censored for users behind China’s Great Firewall.
Outside of the controls, however, videos circulated on the social media platform X. In several, dozens of people could be seen lying on the track at the sports complex, which is regularly used by hundreds of residents to run, play soccer or dance.
In one, shared by news blogger and dissident Li Ying, a woman says “my foot is broken.” That same video showed a firefighter performing CPR on a person, as others were told to leave. Li, who is known on X as Teacher Li, posts daily news based on user submissions
In addition to the 35 people killed, police said 43 were injured.
China has seen a number of attacks in which suspects appear to target members of the public at random.
In October, a man was detained after he allegedly attacked children with a knife at a school in Beijing. Five people were wounded. In September, three people were killed in a knife attack in a Shanghai supermarket, and another 15 were injured. Police said at the time that the suspect had personal financial disputes and came to Shanghai to “vent his anger.”
In May, two people were killed and 21 injured in a knife attack in a hospital in Yunnan province.
Police identified the man detained in Monday’s attack only by his family name of Fan, as is typical, and said he was unconscious and receiving medical care after being found in his car with a knife and wounded.
He was dissatisfied with the split of financial assets in his divorce, according to a preliminary investigation, police said.
Chinese authorities appeared to be tightly controlling information about the incident. Internet censors tend to take extra care to scrub social media ahead of and during major events, such as the aviation exhibition or the annual meeting of the National People’s Congress.
For almost 24 hours after the attack, it was unclear what the death or injury toll was. On Tuesday morning, a search on the Chinese social media platform Weibo for the sports center turned up just a few posts, with only a couple referring to the fact something had happened, without pictures or details. Articles by Chinese media from Monday night about the incident were taken down.
Chinese leader Xi Jinping called for the “strict” punishment of the perpetrator according to law in a statement Tuesday evening.
He also called on all local governments “to strengthen prevention and control of risks at the source, strictly prevent extreme cases from occurring, and to resolve conflicts and disputes in a timely manner,” according to the official Xinhua news agency.


Indian travel agents record surge in outbound tourism to Middle East

Updated 12 November 2024
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Indian travel agents record surge in outbound tourism to Middle East

  • There has been an increase of at least 30% in trips to Middle East from Indian city of Ahmedabad alone, agent says
  • Indian travelers are drawn to ‘less explored’ Middle East region, which is increasingly becoming top choice

NEW DELHI: An increasing number of Indian travelers are visiting the Middle East this year, tour operators said on Tuesday after recording a significant surge to the region during the Diwali holiday season.

The Middle East has become an increasingly popular foreign destination for many Indian travelers, with Saudi Arabia and the UAE often cited as the top two countries in demand.

As the festive Diwali season and the long holidays that came with it concluded earlier this month, tourism players in India say there was a notable increase in trips to Arab countries.

“In this festival season, there was a huge demand,” Jyoti Mayal, president of the Travel Agents Association of India, told Arab News on travel from India to the UAE, citing Saudi Arabia and Qatar as particularly popular destinations.

“These countries in the Middle East are less explored and that’s why more and more people are traveling (to them).”

Travelers from the western Indian state of Gujarat were drawn to new and affordable packages offered to Gulf destinations like Dubai, said tour agent Manish Sharma.

“From Ahmedabad, I can say that compared to the past, there has been an increase of 30 to 35 percent in the outbound travels to the Middle East this time,” Sharma, who runs his business in the Gujarati capital, told Arab News.

Their top choices were UAE cities such as Abu Dhabi, Sharjah and Dubai, he added.

“The reasons for the growth are manifold — it’s cheap, easy connectivity, it’s near, you get good food,” he added.

Members of the Gujarati middle class “take at least one or two vacations every year,” he said. “During Diwali and summer vacation, they prefer to go to Dubai.”

Many Indians appear to be taking advantage of the increasing number of direct flights to the UAE. There are at least 14 daily flights to Dubai from Ahmedabad alone.

“There has been an increase in Dubai travel in the last 10 years, (and) in the last three years tourism has grown greatly. But this year, tourism to UAE has gone phenomenally and the reason is the increase in the number of flights,” Sharma said.