In a media report, Christina Goldbaum said that after the Taliban’s takeover of Kabul in mid-August, Afghanistan’s economy has crashed and has led the country into one of the worst humanitarian crises.
In her report, Christina Goldbaum further added that the aid of million dollars has now vanished, which once propped up the previous government, there are billions of assets in the state which are frozen, and from the global banking system, the new government has been isolated due to the economic sanctions.
Afghanistan now faces a very terrible shortage of cash which has destroyed the country’s banks and businesses. The prices of food and fuel have poorly inflated, and it has triggered a hunger crisis all over the country.
On August 15, the Taliban entered and took over Kabul, which caused the US-backed government to step down. The composition of the new interim government of Afghanistan was announced later in September.
Following the Taliban’s takeover, Afghanistan is under continuous crises like economic, security crises and humanitarian crises.
The World Health Organization (WHO) warned earlier this month that due to the Taliban’s takeover by the end of the year, around 3.2 million children are estimated to face acute malnutrition in Afghanistan and out of whom, as the temperature drops, one million were at the risk of dying.
Christina Goldbaum further added that in the capital, on the side of the road, people have hawked their home furniture in desperate exchange for food. In the public hospitals in other major cities, there is no money to buy the needed medicines, and there are some doctors and nurses who have left their posts because they were not being paid. Parents who cannot afford food or medicines along with their feeble children are in rural clinics, which are overcrowded. Some of the economic migrants have managed to flock to the borders of Pakistan and Iran.
The aid provided to Afghanistan was highlighted in the report. Christina Goldbaum wrote that in aid to Afghanistan and to Afghan refugees in neighbouring countries, it had been pledged in recent weeks that the United States and the European Union would provide USD 1.29 billion more.
However, the economists and aid organizations warned that if the economy continues to crumble, the aid could only do much as defend off a humanitarian catastrophe.
A report cited an analysis by the United Nations Development Program that by the middle of the next year, about 97 percent of the Afghan population could sink below the poverty line.