No conflict or crisis can be deconstructed quickly and easily.
And Afghanistan is no exception.
Yet in its case, we do know what could immediately alleviate the suffering its currently under – and prevent this humanitarian crisis from deepening.
This is what this article is about.
I have previously written about the nightmarish predictions that international bodies and various aid agencies had for Afghanistan. Tragically, the situation now is as dire as predicted.
A new UN report released in March 2022 states that a number as high as 95 per cent of Afghan households don’t have enough to eat. Malnutrion and food insecurity are rampant. Accute hunger rose from 14 million people in July 2021 to 23 million in March 2022. Here let’s not forget the population of Afghanistan is just over 40 million.
We know that political turmoil – on top of devastation of a 20-year war – after the Taliban took power in August 2021 is a big factor in this crisis.
But we also know what one other factor that could immediately alleviate this suffering of the Afghan people is: these are the frozen funds that belong to the people of Afghanistan, and that are kept in mostly U.S. accounts.
(Please read and hear more about it here)
More and more organizations are calling for the U.S. to return these funds back to the country that is in a desperate need to pay its employers, to resume paying its pensions, and to finally start healing.
What could be done with these funds once they’re unfrozen? What are civil societies in Afghanistan saying about it? What about the representatives of the Afghan Central Bank?
To hear about all this and more, please watch this webinar which is my video recommendation for today.
In it, amazing ladies who made up the first civil society women’s delegation to Afghanistan since the takeover of the Taliban in April 2021 share what they have learned on on their trip.
They represent different organizations that all demand the same thing – for the U.S. government to release the money to the Afghan government. It belongs to Afghanistan, and this is what the country desperately needs.
They also talk about an alternative to sanctions and other types of punishment that Afghanistan has been under; how we can push and influece a regime as closed as the Taliban’s, no matter how unsual it might sound.
Please watch it and share it widely.
If you’d like to learn more about this campaign to release the funds to Afghanistan, please see what Unfreeze Afghanistan – a coalition created for specifically this – has been doing.
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