By Staff Writer
21:12:2021

The 57-member Organisation of Islamic Countries special meeting on Afghanistan vowed to prevent Afghanistan’s collapse, yet was short on the measures that would be adopted. Organised at the behest of Pakistan, the meeting mandated the creation of a humanitarian fund, which would supposedly provide aid to Afghan NGOs, yet no actual amounts were stipulated, and no date for the fund’s formation was specified.

This is different to the many fundraisers for Yemen, which, although not consistently entirely successful, often saw Gulf lenders pledge billions of dollars in aid.

Furthermore, no formal recognition was provided to the Taliban government, which nevertheless is still expected, to prevent the country from being used as a staging post for militancy.

Amir Khan Muttaqi, Afghanistan’s acting Foreign Minister, was even prevented from being present in the official picture. In addition, little was said about revitalising the country’s banking system, which is necessary for the re-starting of its economy. It has lost around 40% of its value in the past few months, and food and gas inflation sits at over 40%, and the UN reports that over 23 million Afghans require aid.
Speaking to the summit, Martin Griffiths, UN’s Under Secretary for Humanitarian Affairs, warned that the country’s economy was in free-fall and would drag the whole population down if nothing was done about it.

The World Bank is slowly releasing around 280 million in aid to the country; however, only a fifth of the 1.2 billion in aid potential currently exists. Further, the US remains silent on unfreezing the 9 billion in cash reserves, which belongs to Afghanistan, and which is sorely required to once again re-start the country’s economy.