Afghanistan’s 39 million people face a cratering economy, a winter of food shortages and growing poverty three months after the Taliban seized power as the last United States troops withdrew from 20 years of war.
The World Bank is finalising a proposal to deliver up to $500m from a frozen Afghanistan aid fund to humanitarian agencies, people familiar with the plans told Reuters news agency, but it leaves out tens of thousands of public sector workers and remains complicated by United States sanctions.
Board members will meet informally on Tuesday to discuss the proposal, hammered out in recent weeks with US and United Nations officials, to redirect the funds from the Afghanistan Reconstruction Trust Fund (ARTF), which has a total of $1.5bn. Are US-led sanctions worsening Afghanistan’s humanitarian crisis?
Afghanistan’s 39 million people face a cratering economy, a winter of food shortages and growing poverty three months after the Taliban seized power as the last US troops withdrew from 20 years of war.
Afghan experts said the aid will help, but big gaps remain, including how to get the funds into Afghanistan without exposing the financial institutions involved to US sanctions, and the lack of focus on state workers, the sources said.
The money will go mainly to addressing urgent healthcare needs in Afghanistan, where less than seven percent of the population has been vaccinated against the coronavirus, they said.
For now, it will not cover salaries for teachers and other government workers, a policy that the experts say could hasten the collapse of Afghanistan’s public education, healthcare and social services systems.
They warn that hundreds of thousands of workers, who have been unpaid for months, could stop showing up for their jobs and join a massive exodus from the country.
The World Bank will have no oversight of the funds once they are transferred into Afghanistan, said one of the sources familiar with the plans.
“The proposal calls for the World Bank to transfer the money to the UN and other humanitarian agencies, without any oversight or reporting, but it says nothing about the financial sector, or how the money will get into the country,” the source said, calling US sanctions a major constraint.
While the US Department of the Treasury has provided “comfort letters” assuring banks that they can process humanitarian transactions, concern about sanctions continues to prevent the passage of even basic supplies, including food and medicine, the source added.
“It’s a scorched-earth approach. We’re driving the country into the dust,” said the source. Crippling sanctions and failure to take care of public sector workers will “create more refugees, more desperation and more extremism”.
Any decision to redirect ARTF money requires the approval of all its donors, of which the US has been the largest.
A US Department of State spokesperson confirmed that Washington is working with the World Bank and other donors on how to use the funds, including potentially paying those who work in “critical positions such as healthcare workers and teachers”.
The spokesperson said the US government remains committed to meeting the critical needs of the Afghan people, “especially across health, nutrition, education, and food security sectors … but international aid is not a silver bullet.”
Established in 2002 and administered by the World Bank, the ARTF was the largest financing source for Afghanistan’s civilian budget, which was more than 70 percent funded by foreign aid. The World Bank suspended disbursements after the Taliban takeover.
At the same time, Washington stopped supplying US dollars to the country and joined in freezing some $9bn in Afghan central bank assets and halting financial assistance.
