Hunger crisis in Afghanistan

Business Daily

BBC

Business

4.4 • 816 Ratings

🗓️ 18 November 2021

⏱️ 18 minutes

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Summary

Is it time to stop the freeze of the country's financial assets and donor aid or will that just legitimise the Taliban? Ed Butler speaks to John Sifton, the Asia advocacy director for the campaign group Human Rights Watch, who says the west should ease up on its sanctions to help alleviate the situation. But Alex Zerden, who worked with the US Treasury department in Kabul from 2018 to 2019 and is now a senior fellow at the Centre for New American Security in Washington DC, defends the current US refusal to open the financial taps, says the Taliban itself is primarily responsible for the mess the country's in. Ed also speaks to health worker Karsten Noko from MSF (doctors without borders), who is desperately trying to keep its operations running without properly functioning bank services. And Masuda Sultan, a US-Afghan aid worker, who campaigns for the non-profit Unfreeze Afghanistan, tells him how bad the situation is there.

(Picture: Afghan grandmother and her grandchildren, members of one of the Afghan families that put their children up for sale, pose for a photo at their rental home without water and electricity in Afghanistan; Credit: Stringer/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi there, I'm Ed Butler. Welcome to Business Daily from the BBC. Today, Afghanistan is on the brink of starvation, we're told. Is it time to loosen the financial constraints that are crippling its economy? Why is it that Western Union and MoneyGram can't send dollars in? Why is it that UNICEF can't withdraw money to pay teachers' salaries or health workers?
0:24.5	It's a tragic and quite simple problem that has a somewhat simple solution.
0:30.3	But will releasing the taps simply give a green light to the Taliban,
0:35.4	the ruling force who some blame for creating the crisis.
0:39.4	Because of the Taliban's violent takeover of the government, of the country,
0:44.1	its abandonment of a negotiated peace process, tens of millions of Afghans are suffering because of that.
0:49.3	The Afghan dilemma and how to fix it. Business Daily from the BBC.
1:05.4	This is Zerange, the city on Afghanistan's western border with Iran.
1:13.2	Thousands of Afghans, men, women and some children are lining up to pay people smugglers to escape.
1:19.4	The BBC Secunda Kamani was there just last week watching the massive human exodus.
1:24.2	Aren't you worried about going with all these young children?
1:28.6	We have no choice but to leave.
1:30.2	There's no work.
1:32.6	My husband used to work for the government.
1:35.5	I used to work as a teacher in a school in Kabul.
1:38.6	I didn't get my salary for the last three months.
1:39.8	I was helpless.
1:42.3	What can I give my children to eat?
1:48.7	The economy is collapsing and few have faith in the new Taliban government.
1:53.2	At least 4,000 leave here every day, we're told.
2:01.4	This is a deeply surreal sight, a huge people-smuggling hub hub operating completely openly.
2:07.6	The Taliban say that rising poverty here means that it's not possible to stop all these people from trying to leave the country.
	...

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