Daily Times

News from the World Bank, that donors have greed to release $280 million in aid for Afghanistan, is appreciated even though the amount is too little considering the grave humanitarian catastrophe unfolding in the country and has come too late. Still, it is a start and once the world sees how quickly it is used up and how much more money is needed, there’s every reason to hope that more will come in time to avert the drought and famine expected to accompany this year’s brutal winter. The UN has been warning that the winter suffering and utter destitution might well kill more people than 40 years of unending war, yet such is the nature of sanctions imposed on Kabul that even aid money, free of any political connections, has to go through an excruciating labyrinth to get there.

Then there’s also the $10 billion of the Afghan central bank’s money in foreign banks that the American government has frozen; for no other purpose than teaching the Taliban a cruel lesson for humiliating the world’s only superpower with the takeover of Kabul. Yet the Taliban are also not helping their own cause by refusing to honour commitments made in Doha just ahead of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan. It can’t be all that difficult to form an inclusive government and give women and minorities equal rights, especially since it would be good for the country, but no such thing has happened so far.

There are, disturbingly, also reports that the Taliban have conducting summary executions and kidnappings of former security personnel, in violation of the blanket amnesty promised in the Doha talks. So, while Washington and Kabul wait for the other to blink first, it is the poor people of Afghanistan that must continue to suffer. It can only be hoped that this $280 million will open the floodgates to the kind of aid that is so urgently needed and the Afghan and US governments will overcome their remaining differences sooner rather than later.. *