United Nations
Reuters
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres appealed on Friday for an injection of cash into Afghanistan to avoid an economic meltdown that would spark a “catastrophic” situation for the Afghan people and be a “gift for terrorist groups.”
His remarks come after his special envoy on Afghanistan, Deborah Lyons, warned the Security Council on Thursday that the freezing of billions of dollars in international Afghan assets to keep them out of Taliban hands would inevitably spark “a severe economic downturn”.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres speaks during a news conference before a meeting with Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez at Moncloa Palace in Madrid, Spain, on 2nd July. PICTURE: Reuters/Susana Vera/File photo.
“At the present moment the UN is not even able to pay its salaries to its own workers,” Guterres told reporters.
“We need to find ways to avoid a situation that would be catastrophic for the people and, in my opinion, a source of instability, and an action, gift for terrorist groups still operating there,” he said.
Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State’s Afghan affiliate, ISIS-Khorosan, are present in Afghanistan.
Guterres said he had been speaking with International Monetary Fund chief Kristalina Georgieva, telling reporters it was essential to agree on waivers or mechanisms to get money into Afghanistan. The IMF has blocked the Taliban from accessing some $US440 million in new emergency reserves.
Much of the Afghan central bank’s $US10 billion in assets are also parked overseas, where they have been frozen since the Taliban came to power last month. They are considered a key instrument for the West to pressure the Islamist group.
Both Guterres and UN aid chief Martin Griffiths hope that international programs to get cash into war-torn Yemen could be replicated in Afghanistan. In Yemen, the UN children’s agency, UNICEF, makes monthly cash payments to some 1.5 million of the poorest families through a program funded by the World Bank.
The United Nations is also working to ensure it can continue its humanitarian work in Afghanistan, where at least 18 million people – half the country’s population – already need help.
“We are permanently engaging with the Taliban and we believe that the dialogue with the Taliban is absolutely essential at the present moment,” Guterres said.
Meanwhile, UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi said on Friday that the Taliban victory in Afghanistan has not led to a dramatic refugee exodus but the country urgently needs humanitarian aid to prevent economic collapse and major upheaval.
Half a million people had been displaced within Afghanistan in recent months, Grandi said, a number which would grow if health services, schools and the economy break down.
“In reality we have not seen at this point large movements of Afghan people towards the borders of the country,” Grandi told Reuters. “What we continue to see is a very dramatic phenomenon of internal displacement.”
Even before the Taliban launched its final push to seize control, three million Afghans were already displaced in a country struggling with drought and the COVID-19 pandemic, and where nearly half the population received some form of aid.
“We are really worried…[about] the economic conditions, basic services like education and health. If those things collapse then we have a massive humanitarian crisis on our hands and most likely massive displacement as well,” Grandi said.
The first signs of such a crisis were already visible, with people struggling to buy basic goods and concerns growing over medical supplies. There was a need to “really scale up massively” a sustained humanitarian operation, he said.
The UNHCR said two weeks ago that up to half a million Afghans could leave their homeland by the end of the year in a worst-case scenario.
Asked how many people may flee in the event of economic collapse, Grandi said it was “anybody’s guess at that point”.