ILE LEGAL BLOG

How has Afghanistan become the victim of one of the world’s largest humanitarian crises?

Author – Anant Gupta, Student at Dharmashastra National Law University, Jabalpur

Introduction

Twenty years of war, hundreds of terrorist attacks, thousands of civilians’ deaths and we are talking about Asia’s third-largest landlocked country, Afghanistan. Two years after the withdrawal of the U.S. forces, the humanitarian situation in Afghanistan is getting worse day by day. You can predict the situation by the fact that more than 50% of Afghanistan’s 390 million population will face acute food shortages this winter. Since the Taliban has taken control of the government, almost every country in the world has cut their relations and refused to give them recognition. Even Pakistan which claims to be the friend of the Taliban hasn’t given the recognition yet and because of this, international institutions like World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) have blocked the funding of Afghanistan. Let’s analyse the situation in Afghanistan and why it has happened.

Figure 1: Photo by Oriane Zerah / ABACA Press / Reuters

How bad is the situation?

Even before the US withdrawal and the Taliban takeover, Afghanistan was one of the world’s most Complex Humanitarian Emergencies (CHEs). But after the withdrawal, this has only worsened and the situation is so bad that some 23 million people are in dire need of food according to the United Nations World Food Program (WFP). Out of these, 9 million are facing the emergency level of food shortage. World Health Organization (WHO) says that 3.2 million children are at risk of acute malnourishment of which 1 million are likely to die. The Chance that an Afghan baby will go hungry and die is highest in 20 years. UNDP says that by the middle of 2022, Afghanistan can face “universal poverty” which means 97% of Afghanistan’s population will be living below the international poverty line designated by the World Bank which is $1.90 a day. This continuous deteriorating situation is a sign that soon Afghanistan will become the world’s largest humanitarian crisis by replacing Yemen’s.

End of the U.S.’s 20-year war

It all started on September 11, 2001, when the World Trade Centre in New York, the U.S. was attacked by a terrorist organization headed by Osama bin Laden believed to be based in Afghanistan. At that period time, the Taliban was ruling in Afghanistan since 1996. George W Bush, the then-president of the United States of America plan to invade Afghanistan and had done so. After that, 20 years have passed, governments changed in both the U.S. and Afghanistan but U.S. military presence has not deteriorated. This was the Trump administration that, in 2019 held a meeting with the Taliban in Doha, Qatar, and the discussion was held regarding the separation of power between the democratically elected government of President Ashraf Ghani and the Taliban. It was under Biden’s administration that military presence was decreased in Afghanistan and September 11th was the last date of any U.S. soldier’s presence on Afghanistan’s soil.

Taliban’s takeover

There were a lot of speculations about the takeover of Afghanistan by the Taliban after the US withdrawal and how early it can happen. Many geopolitical analysts and scholars suggest that it will take nearly take 150 to 180 days to capture the whole of Afghanistan. But the world was shocked when the Taliban had taken control of Afghanistan in just 10 days. Due to this surprising takeover, migration happened at a very large scale as people tried to get out of the country because of the fear of the Taliban and their horrendous history of administration in 1996-2001. People of Afghanistan tried to reach the airport however they can which caused a lot of accidental deaths and sufferings, countries around the world including India sent flights to get back their citizens who have stuck in Afghanistan.

International humanitarian response

A meeting, headed by United Nations secretary-general Antonio Guterres, was conducted to review the ongoing situation in Afghanistan and to provide immediate assistance to the people living there. More than 100 countries and 30 organizations participated in the meeting. Approximately 1.2 billion U.S. dollars were collected through the participating countries of which 606 million U.S. dollars had been given on an immediate basis by the end of 2021. 1/3rd of the Afghans is facing emergency level food insecurity, along with that more than half of the Afghan children are at the edge of acute malnutrition.

China has provided humanitarian aid like food and Covid-19 vaccines for 30 million U.S. dollars. India too has pledged to send 50,000 tons of wheat to Afghanistan to mitigate the hunger crisis which has been delayed due to Pakistan’s non-commitment to let Indian trucks pass through its land because of their border issues with India.

Although the Taliban challenge is the major one, other ones are confronting Afghanistan like widening poverty, migration, internal disputes, climate change-induced floods and drought, and the coronavirus. UN’s approach of assisting can give short-term benefits but it is effective in a long-term catastrophic humanitarian crisis. All the assistance can make the country more dependent on others and encourage perverse incentives.

The way forward

A lot of problems arise just because of one action, the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan last year and the Taliban taking control of the government. Since then, the U.S. sanctions on Afghanistan and restrictions on international aid have broken the back of Afghanistan’s economy. There were a lot of efforts put forward by the UN and the US to assist the civilians of Afghanistan and provide humanitarian aid but Afghan people are not getting the assistance anywhere close to the need. Also, no food and medical assistance will be enough to compensate for the large-scale harm of rising inflation, banking collapse, freeze on civil servants’ salaries, and other serious consequences affecting the most vulnerable sections of Afghanistan.

For the last 20 years, the Taliban has been promising welfare, prosperity, and a very different administration to their previous regime but their actions are not defining this. They gave no representation to women in their newly set up cabinet and even banned girls from going to school. If they’re unwilling to provide even for the basic needs of Afghanistan’s civilians, they should be held accountable for this.

First of all, we need to make sure that there is an adequate and fair representation of all sections of society including ethnic groups, women, and youth in the ruling government established by the Taliban. This can be achieved through diplomatic meetings among the international community because unless we do not remove the root cause of the widening humanitarian crisis it would not only affect the regional stability but also the larger international peace and security. We have already witnessed the example when we left the previous regime of the Taliban on their own and we all know what happened after that, an attack on the world’s most powerful country leaving thousands of people to die. Secondly, we need to ensure that there is no further continuity and expansion of terrorism, extremism, and radicalism in Afghanistan and the region.

In conclusion, what we need is neither keep providing the country with humanitarian support nor leave it altogether but find a long-term solution by forming an inclusive government that would look after the basic needs of the Afghan people. They have been living in a war-like situation for 4 decades, the international community must make sure that Afghan people’s rights not be violated and their basic needs would not go unfulfilled, and that would ensure peace and instability in the region and around the world.

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