A Dec. 4 op-ed in Al Jazeera, “Aid Cut-Off May Kill More Afghans Than War,” calls upon the international community to act immediately to open up funding and humanitarian resources to save the Afghan people from disaster. The authors are officials in European-based humanitarian aid organizations. “Without swift, pragmatic action from the international community, more people will die of hunger in 2022 alone than from violence during the last 20 years of conflict.” [https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2021/12/4/urgent-action-needed-to-save-millions-of-afghan]
The op-ed points out that when the Taliban took power, funding from international sources was immediately cut off, due to both U.S. and UN sanctions, which effectively isolated Afghanistan from the international banking community. This has plunged millions into immediate, acute poverty: “Aid organizations struggle to access their funds to pay salaries of medics and teachers, or even buy medicines or firewood to heat maternity wards.”
It underscores the fact that Afghanistan has already lost 40% of this year’s crop to the second year of a severe drought. “Roughly half the population, some 20 million people, are unable to feed themselves on a daily basis—and that number is expected to rise, according to UN agencies. An estimated 3.2 million children under the age of five are expected to suffer from acute malnutrition by the end of the year. Of those, at least 1 million children are at risk of dying if they do not receive immediate treatment,” they explain.
