Rescuing Afghanistan is World’s Responsibility

Rescuing Afghanistan is World’s Responsibility

Leiden, 24 August 2022

Humanitarian aid will not be enough to prevent Afghanistan’s collapse

Since October 2001, when the US and UK special forces invaded Afghanistan and the UN Security Council played a key role in shaping the Islamic Republic by reaffirming all 2001 resolutions on the situation in Afghanistan, particularly resolutions 1378 (endorsing the Bonn Agreement on formation of Afghan government), resolution1383(endorsing the provisional arrangements), and resolution 1386 of 20 December 2001 which authorized unanimously the establishment of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF). Even the Doha agreement was signed by the USA in March 2020 and approved by UNSC and the EU within some weeks. This means that the International Community took the country’s destiny in its hands and has Therefore a remarkable degree of responsibility for the current situation in Afghanistan.
The critical situation on the ground in Afghanistan has different dimensions: Humanitarian, economic, political, human rights including women rights and the rights of political participation for all Afghan nationals.
Humanitarian situation in Afghanistan is a matter of concern for the United Nations, humanitarian assistances agencies and organizations , Afghan diaspora in Europe and international community. World powers try to manage some humanitarian help, directly or through UN agencies. But all engaged agencies and organizations have expressed repeatedly that only humanitarian help is not enough for preventing the economic collapse of the country. We can blame the Taliban for a part of this situation, but even before the collapse of Ghani’s regime, the rate of poverty and joblessness was 50% in Afghanistan. There are also other reasons for current crisis in Afghanistan, for example;
allowing Afghan economy by the Western donors to remain dependent on foreign aid and suspension of billions of promised development aid in august 2021, as Western troops left the country,
only those infrastructural projects got the chance of financing by the foreign powers involved in past two decades in Afghanistan that supported the war on terror,
the country has faced the worst drought and natural disasters in decades, due to impacts of the environment changes,
Taliban takeover and lack of internal and international legitimacy of their regime,
cycles of conflict in the past 43 years.
Knowing these reasons, the UN humanitarian assistance agencies say; more is needed to rescue the country. Only humanitarian aid will never be the solution.
The private sector partly fled the country and partly resisted the problems of the past year, but their businesses reduced or stopped production under the Taliban regime. They point to sanctions on banking system as the main reason of their failure. But they point also to other reasons such as, lack of international legitimacy of Taliban regime, extreme poverty in the country and lack of electricity. This situation force many businesses to choose between ceasing to exist or moving to Turkey or Dubai. There have been sporadic contributions especially by the US to solve the liquidity crisis, but Afghanistan needs easing the sanctions on banking system to enable the country’s own industrial and commercial businesses to run, employ men and women and produce.
FAROE is front runner in fight for the rights of school girls, women rights and civil and human rights for every Afghan. But in a situation where many staff of humanitarian organizations say they are witnesses of parents who sell some of their children, mostly daughters to feed their other kids, enabling the population to produce their basic necessities and preventing the economy of the country from total collapse gets for us similar priority.
We plea for direct sanctions on the Taliban leaders and the group itself in order to press them to pay attention to human rights, women rights and the right of political participation for all population of Afghanistan. We ask for easing the sanctions on banking system which affect directly Afghan businesses and the long-suffered people of Afghanistan.

Federation of Afghan Resident Organizations in Europe (FAROE)

FAROE Committee for External Relations