Aid plan for Afghanistan
US OFFERS RESOLUTION WHILE PAKISTAN SUMMIT SEEKS HUMANITARIAN RELIEF
THE United States on Monday (20) submitted a new draft resolution to the UN Security Council on facilitating humanitarian aid to Afghanistan while keeping it out of Taliban hands, after abandoning an earlier proposal under pressure from China.
After a first draft was rejected by China and Russia, but also India, France and Britain, Washington submitted a new version to the 15-member council, which could vote on the resolution soon, according to diplomatic sources.
Veto-wielding Beijing’s objections were not immediately clear.
The new draft said “that for a period of one year, humanitarian assistance and other activities that support basic human needs in Afghanistan are not a violation of” the 2015 resolution 2255 that imposed sanctions on Taliban-related entities.
“The processing and payment of funds, other financial assets or economic resources, and the provision of goods and services necessary to ensure the timely delivery of such assistance or to support such activities are permitted,” the draft reads.
The international community has struggled over how to avert a humanitarian catastrophe amid economic meltdown in Afghanistan since the Taliban swept back to power in mid-August, prompting the United States to freeze $9.5 billion in assets belonging to the Afghan central bank.
The text “strongly encourages providers” of humanitarian assistance “to minimise the accrual of any benefits” – whether directly or indirectly – by sanctioned individuals or entities.
After the Taliban takeover, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank also suspended activities in Afghanistan, withholding aid as well as $340 million (£256m)in new reserves issued by the IMF in August.
On December 10, the World Bank said international donors agreed to release $280m (£211m) to Unicef and the World Food Programme for Afghanistan.
But a UN official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said much more was needed.
“We need a lot more of the funding that’s been frozen at the bank released and we need donors to contribute.” Last Sunday (19), Muslim nations resolved to work with the United Nations to try to unlock hundreds of millions of dollars in frozen Afghan assets in a bid to tackle a growing humanitarian crisis. At a special meeting in Pakistan of the 57-member Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) delegates said they would work “to unlock the financial and banking channels to resume liquidity and flow of financial and humanitarian assistance”.
An OIC resolution released after the meeting said the Islamic Development Bank would lead the effort to free up assistance by the first quarter of next year.
It also urged Afghanistan’s rulers to abide by “obligations under international human rights covenants, especially with regards to the rights of women, children, youth, elderly and people with special needs”.
Earlier, Pakistan warned of “grave consequences” for the international community if Afghanistan’s economic meltdown continued, and urged world leaders to find ways to engage with the Taliban to help prevent a humanitarian catastrophe.
Pakistan foreign minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi said the deepening crisis could bring mass hunger, a flood of refugees and a rise in extremism.
“We cannot ignore the danger of complete economic meltdown,” he told the gathering, which also included Taliban foreign minister Amir Khan Muttaqi alongside delegates from the United States, China, Russia, the European Union and UN.
Pakistan prime minister Imran Khan said the world needed to separate the Taliban from ordinary Afghans. “I speak to the United States specifically that they must delink the Afghanistan government from the 40 million Afghan citizens,” he said, “even if they have been in conflict with the Taliban for 20 years.”
He also urged caution in linking recognition of the new government to Western ideals of human rights. “Every country is different... every society’s idea of human rights is different,” he said.
The OIC also resolved Sunday to arrange for a team of international Muslim scholars to engage with the Taliban on issues “such as, but not limited to, tolerance and moderation in Islam, equal access to education and women’s rights in Islam”.
No nation has yet formally recognised the Taliban government and diplomats face the delicate task of channelling aid to the stricken Afghan economy without propping up the hardline Islamists. Although the Taliban have promised a lighter version of the hardline rule that characterised their first stint in power from 1996 to 2001, women are largely excluded from government employment, and secondary schools for girls have mostly remained shuttered.
Asked if the OIC had pressed the Taliban to be more inclusive on issues such as women’s rights, Qureshi said “obviously they feel they are moving in that direction”.
“They are saying ‘let us decide in our own time’,” he added.
The OIC meeting did not give the new Taliban government the formal international recognition it desperately craves and the new regime’s foreign minister Amir Khan Muttaqi was excluded from the official photograph taken during the event.
Muttaqi told reporters, however, that his government “has the right to be officially recognised”.
The 31-point OIC resolution was short on specifics and gave no figure for financial assistance.
“There are many who want to donate but do not want to donate directly, they want some mechanism that they are comfortable with,” said Qureshi.