Al Jazeera
The Taliban has been celebrating the withdrawal of US-led NATO forces after 20 years of war, but for millions of Afghans, life remains difficult and uncertain amid a crumbling economy.
The Taliban, which seized control of the country for the second time, celebrated their victory, saying that Afghanistan is finally a “free and sovereign” nation.
US has moral obligation to aid Afghanistan, Afghan Americans say UN chief warns of ‘humanitarian catastrophe’ in Afghanistan Qatar warns isolating Taliban could lead to more instability
US President Joe Biden on Tuesday said that the withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan was the best available option for him to end to country’s longest military campaign.
Government employees have not been paid salaries for months and banks are barely functional as the country has been cut off from the international financial institutions after the Taliban took over the country on August 15.
More than half a million Afghans have been internally displaced due to months of deadly fighting between the Taliban fighters and government forces.
United Nations chief Antonio Guterres on Tuesday warned of a looming “humanitarian catastrophe”, adding that basic services threatened to collapse “completely”.
Charles Stratford, Al Jazeera’s correspondent, said that there are increasing concerns over the formation of a new government in Afghanistan and how the Taliban intend to deal with the country’s ailing economy.
“…there are huge questions with respect to governance in terms of delivering services and managing an economy that is hemorrhaging,” Stratford, reporting from Kabul, said.
He pointed out that the decision – by some international institutions, such as the Word Bank and IMF – to freeze aid disbursements to the country, will represent another major obstacle for the Taliban.
On Wednesday, Afghanistan central bank board member urged US President Joe Biden and IMF to release funds for the country. The US froze nearly $9.5bn in assets belonging to the Afghan central bank last month.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said that the US military intervention in Afghanistan had achieved nothing but tragedy and loss of life on all sides and showed it was impossible to foist foreign values on other nations.
Speaking to teenagers at an educational facility in the Russian Far East, Putin made clear that he deemed the US approach to a country once invaded by the Soviet Union to have been deeply flawed.
“US forces were present on this territory for 20 years and for 20 years tried … to civilise the people who live there, to instil their own norms and standards of life in the widest possible sense of this word, including when it comes to the political organisation of society,” said Putin.
“The result is only tragedies and losses of life for those who did it, the United States, and even more so for those people who live on the territory of Afghanistan. The result is zero, if not a negative one all round.”
Russia’s security chiefs have made clear they are deeply worried about a potential spill-over of instability into Central Asia, the possible infiltration of extremists into the wider region including Russia, and Afghan drug production.
Putin, who has previously said that Moscow has learnt the lessons of the Soviet Union’s own Afghan debacle and has no plans to deploy troops there, said it was important to take into account the history, culture, and philosophy of life of people like the Afghans when dealing with them.
“It’s not possible to foist anything on them from the outside,” said Putin.
