GENEVA: The United Nations appealed for almost $200 million in extra funding for life-saving aid in Afghanistan after the Taliban’s takeover sparked a host of new issues.
The UN humanitarian agency OCHA said the extra sum meant a total of $606 million in aid was now needed for Afghanistan until the end of the year.
“Basic services in Afghanistan are collapsing and food and other life-saving aid is about to run out,” said OCHA spokesman Jens Laerke.
The issue will be discussed next Monday at a ministerial meeting in Geneva hosted by UN chief Antonio Guterres.
The country, now under the control of the Taliban after 20 years of war, is facing a “looming humanitarian catastrophe”, Guterres’s spokesman Stephane Dujarric warned last week when announcing the conference.
OCHA voiced hope that countries would pledge generously at the conference, saying $606 million was needed to provide critical food and livelihood assistance to nearly 11 million people, and essential health services to 3.4 million.
The funds would also go towards treatment for acute malnutrition for more than a million children and women, water, sanitation and hygiene interventions, and protection of children and survivors of gender-based violence.
Most of the requested funds had already been asked for at the end of last year as part of a $1.3-billion humanitarian appeal for Afghanistan, which remains severely underfunded. Even before the Taliban victory, Afghanistan was heavily aid-dependent — with 40 per cent of the country’s GDP drawn from foreign funding.
The UN has warned 18 million people are facing a humanitarian disaster, and another 18 million could quickly join them.
A full $413 million of Tuesday’s appeal were unmet needs from the previous appeal, while $193 million would go towards new emerging needs and changes in operating costs, OCHA said.
EVACUATIONS
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Tuesday that the Taliban had reiterated a pledge to allow Afghans to freely depart Afghanistan following his meeting with Qatari officials on accelerating evacuations.
US President Joe Biden has faced mounting pressure amid reports that several hundred people, also including Americans, had been prevented for a week from flying out of an airport in northern Afghanistan.
The Taliban told the United States that “they will let people with travel documents freely depart,” Blinken told a news conference in Doha where he and Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin met their Qatari opposite numbers. “We will hold them to that,” he said.
Qatar said that Kabul airport, largely closed since the conclusion of Washington’s chaotic withdrawal from the country at the end of August, would reopen soon, potentially opening an important corridor for Afghans seeking to leave.
“The entire international community is looking to the Taliban to uphold that commitment,” Blinken said, referring to a UN Security Council resolution that urged safe passage. Biden’s senior cabinet members had dinner on arrival on Monday with Qatar’s ruler Emir Shaikh Tamim bin Hamad al Thani where they expressed Washington’s thanks to Doha for its assistance with the Afghanistan airlift.
Qatar was the transit point for nearly half of the more than 120,000 people evacuated from Afghanistan in the final days of the 20-year US war as the Taliban took over.
Doha is the Taliban’s international diplomatic base although Blinken’s aides said he has no plans to meet them as Washington instead waits to judge the group’s actions in power to determine the level of engagement. The United States on Monday facilitated the evacuation of four Americans by land from Afghanistan, the first departures arranged by Washington since the military pullout. A State Department official said the Taliban were aware of the operation and did not interfere.
But non-governmental organisations say that some 600 to 1,300 people — including girls and US citizens — are stuck at the airport in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif.
Marina LeGree, the founder and executive director of a small American non-governmental organisation active in Afghanistan, said that the Taliban are not letting anyone through. US officials say they no longer control the airspace in Afghanistan and that the main airport in Kabul, which the US military seized in August for evacuations, is in disrepair. Qatari technical teams have deployed to Kabul to assess the viability of the airport and begin to prepare it for a return to operation to allow evacuations and the arrival of badly needed humanitarian supplies. – Agencies
