The UN will remain in Afghanistan, but without responses to the humanitarian crisis

A two-day meeting concluded yesterday from which the Taliban leadership was excluded. Unlike Western countries, neighboring nations are interested in economic agreements and maintaining security. According to Unicef, at least 167 children die every day from preventable diseases. The stalemate allows the Taliban to continue enacting bans against women.

Doha ( / Agencies) – The United Nations will maintain its mission in Afghanistan in an attempt to provide humanitarian aid, despite the fact that the Taliban has prohibited female staff from working for the international organization. This was announced yesterday by the UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, adding that, however, international funds for the mission are running out.

The remarks came yesterday at the end of a two-day meeting in Doha, the capital of Qatar, attended by representatives of more than 20 countries. The Taliban authorities were excluded, but on the same days as the international summit, Taliban Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi was allowed to travel to Pakistan between May 6 and 9 to meet with his counterparts in Islamabad and Beijing. . Last month, the UN Security Council also allowed Muttaqi to travel to Uzbekistan to discuss regional security with the foreign ministers of neighboring countries.

It was not disclosed what the talks between Muttaqi and his Pakistani and Chinese counterparts will be about. However, the two countries have repeatedly tried to involve mineral-rich Afghanistan in the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor infrastructure project, which in turn is part of China’s “Belt and Road” initiative.

As Pakistani Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar stated yesterday, threatening or further isolating the Taliban authorities is not a pragmatic approach to alleviating the humanitarian crises in Afghanistan or easing restrictions on women and girls: “What is the alternative? This is my question to those who maintain that withdrawal is even possible,” he said in an interview with Reuters. Statements that confirm that, unlike the West, for Afghanistan’s neighbors the most important thing is trade, the sharing of resources and stability in the face of the terrorist threat (according to US generals, the local branch of the Islamic State, Is-K , is getting closer to being able to carry out international attacks), more than the humanitarian crisis and the economic collapse of Kabul.

Indeed, the two-day meeting that has just concluded does not seem to have found a solution to the political impasse generated after the US withdrawal and the Taliban reconquest of Afghanistan in August 2021. Since then, the international community has faced a dilemma: to recognize and either cooperate with the Taliban government or leave the country and let the de facto authorities deal with the Afghan humanitarian crisis. According to Unicef, 167 children die every day in Afghanistan from preventable diseases, that is, diseases that would be treatable if the right medicines were available. Until 2021, public health (and the Afghan state budget in general) was 80% financed by the international community. Now these funds come in very small amounts due to the aforementioned dilemma. So far, only 5% of the funds needed for the UN mission in Afghanistan have been funded, and with the recent ban preventing women from working for NGOs, humanitarian aid, especially for children and the female population It has gotten even worse. Since 2021, the economy has contracted, becoming one of the countries with the lowest per capita income in the world. 85% of the population was below the poverty line, and in 2022 it reached a record number of 34 million poor people (out of a population of 40 million).

According to some, the solution lies in a third way: punishing the Taliban leaders with sanctions, imposing travel bans or, for example, the return to Afghanistan of the daughters of the Taliban who were allowed to study abroad.

The resistance, which is represented by the fighter Ahmad Massoud and met in Vienna last week, had also called on the international community not to leave the country abandoning the population: “They have left us behind and betrayed us. The people of Afghanistan did not fail democracy: it voted and defended values ​​and women, raised its voice and achieved results in the last 20 years,” he declared, although he added that the solution does not involve recognizing the Taliban government.

In the meantime, however, the divisions leave the Taliban room for maneuver, which without flinching continues to restrict the participation of the female population: today, the Minister of Public Health announced that only male medical graduates will be able to continue their specialization , while women, once again, are completely denied that possibility.