Pakistan and China answer Afghan needs, call for Western nations to fulfill aid

Pakistan and China have shown that they are responsible regional players, becoming exemplary in lending solid support to Afghanistan and helping to avert a humanitarian crisis in the neighboring Asian country, but experts say the United States and others have yet to provide assistances.

This week, Pakistan announced it has allowed the transportation of 50,000 metric tons of wheat in aid to Afghanistan from India through Pakistan, in addition to a pledge of humanitarian assistance worth over $28 million for the war-torn country. 

Following the US' and NATO's withdrawal from Afghanistan and the West's hesitation in stepping up to its humanitarian responsibilities, "the burden of responsibility in averting a humanitarian crisis and economic collapse has shifted to the region", said Salman Bashir, a former foreign secretary of Pakistan and former ambassador to China.

During a meeting of the Apex Committee of the Afghanistan Inter-Ministerial Coordination Cell in Islamabad on Nov 22, the country's top government officials and its army chief met with Imran Khan, Pakistan's prime minister.

Khan "ordered an immediate shipment of in-kind humanitarian assistance worth 5 billion Pakistani rupees ($28.5 million) which will comprise food commodities including 50,000 metric tons of wheat, emergency medical supplies, winter shelters, and other supplies" to Afghanistan, an official document said.

The prime minister instructed all Pakistani ministries to exert maximum effort to facilitate Afghans. He also approved reduction of tariffs and sales tax on major Afghan exports to Pakistan, and directed concerned authorities to revive bus services between Pakistan's Peshawar and Afghanistan's Jalalabad city.

Fawad Chaudhry, Pakistan's information minister, announced in a press conference after the meeting that the passage through the country of food aid that India wants to send Afghanistan has been approved.

"We think the people in Afghanistan should be helped in any way on humanitarian grounds", Chaudhry said.

Former foreign secretary Bashir described this as "exceptional".

"This is a major gesture, given the fact that (Pakistan's) relations with India are at the lowest ebb and bilateral trade with India has been suspended since 2019," he said.

The aid from India, offered earlier this month, was said to have encountered obstacles in reaching the Afghans. India has been "looking at the possibilities, but there have been difficulties due to lack of unimpeded access", said Arindam Bagchi, an Indian foreign ministry spokesman.

Imtiaz Gul, executive director of the Center for Research and Security Studies, or CRSS, in Pakistan, said his country has been "doing whatever it could to facilitate Afghanistan and its people after having hosted over 3 million refugees until 2015 and 2016".

Meanwhile, China has been actively providing Afghanistan with winter supplies and aid. On Nov 20, a Chinese freight train departed for Afghanistan loaded with more than 1,000 tons of humanitarian aid materials and daily necessities donated by China.

Three such special freight trains have so far been deployed from Northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, which borders Afghanistan, to transport humanitarian aid materials.

Since the end of June, more than 2,600 tons of humanitarian aid materials and daily necessities have been delivered to Afghanistan via the special freight train service. Saturday's freight train left China via Horgos Port in Xinjiang carrying 50 containers, and is expected to reach its final destination in around 12 days.

The supplies, all urgently needed by the Afghan people during the winter, included cotton-padded clothes, cotton shoes, blankets, milk tea powder and naan, a type of leavened flatbread and a staple of Xinjiang residents.

Natural disasters such as drought, a series of wars and the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic have left millions of Afghan people suffering from hunger.

A report released by the United Nations World Food Program in October said that over half of Afghanistan's population of 22.8 million people will face acute food insecurity starting this month. Moreover, 3.2 million children under five are expected to suffer from acute malnutrition by the end of 2021.

Khan, at the Apex Committee meeting on Nov 22, also called on the international community to fulfill its collective responsibility to Afghanistan.

"The world owed its support to ensure that they (people of Afghanistan) can live in a peaceful and stable environment after years of constant conflict."

Bashir said Pakistan hopes the urgency of the situation will not be lost on Western countries, which "have a moral obligation to assist the people of Afghanistan at this juncture".

Political prejudices and preferences, as far as internal Afghanistan dispensation is concerned, "should not override the urgent considerations of averting famine and a grave humanitarian disaster in Afghanistan", he said.

After the withdrawal of troops led by the US from Afghanistan in August, following a devastating 20-year occupation that concluded with the Taliban taking over the country's leadership, Washington froze the Afghanistan central bank's assets of more than $9 billion, dealing a devastating blow to the nation's already fragile economy. Some international financial institutions including the World Bank have also halted their aid to Afghanistan.

The Taliban-led Afghan administration has repeatedly asked the US to unfreeze the country's assets, and not attach humanitarian issues to politics.

Afghanistan's acting foreign minister Amir Khan Muttaqi has written an open letter to the US Congress, released on Nov 17, calling on the United States to unfreeze Afghanistan's assets.

"As the cold winter months are fast approaching in Afghanistan, and in a state where our country has been hammered by the coronavirus, drought, war, and poverty, American sanctions have not only played havoc with trade and business but also with humanitarian assistance," Muttaqi said in a signed statement.

"Afghanistan now has everything available for growth and development," he said, and invited the US to invest in the country's manufacturing, agriculture, and mining.

Muttaqi said it was "quite surprising that with the announcement of the new government, the administration of the US slapped sanctions on the assets of our central bank".

"This goes against our expectations as well as the Doha Agreement … Currently, the fundamental challenge of our people is financial security and the roots of this concern lead back to the freezing of assets of our people by the American government," he said.

"It is necessary for both sides to take positive steps in order to build trust."

Muttaqi noted that Afghanistan is concerned that with no change in the current situation, the Afghans will encounter greater difficulties, with the country likely to turn into a source of mass migration in the region and globally, resulting in increasing humanitarian and economic problems for the world.

Gul of CRSS said that the refusal of the US to release the funds means by implication that Afghanistan cannot do deals internationally, with its banks being unable to get dollars from the outside world and its businessmen unable to transact with any country.

This freeze on international financial transaction, he said, has put Afghanistan under unusual pressure.

"Even the funding that has been announced by the European Union of one billion euros ($1.12 billion) to assist Afghanistan finds it difficult to get through," Gul said, referring to the EU's pledge in October during the G20 meeting on Afghanistan.

"That basically means pushing down the economy, restricting the Taliban regime to solicit external funding."

Xinhua contributed to the story.