What is in store for Afghanistan in 2022?

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The economy of the country hit by a war has collapsed, and many Afghans are starving. However, the international community does not want to strengthen new rulers – Taliban – by providing financial assistance to them.

On August 15, 2021, the Taliban overthrew former President of Ashraf Ghani and arrested Kabul, without facing many resistance from Afghan forces.

The US and NATO have attracted most of their strength from the country, hoping Afghan forces will be able to keep Islamic militants in the bay. However, the West spends billions of dollars to train local forces.

When the flag of the Taliban was raised with the Presidential Palace in Kabul, the rebels celebrated the “fall” of a kingdom, vowed to deliver the era of independence and stability.

Four months later, the Taliban made a request repeatedly to Washington to come to their help. The country’s economy has collapsed, and millions of people are on the verge of starvation.

Rising hunger and delivery of jammed assistance created a “fast crisis that was decomposed” in Afghanistan, Unicef warned in November.

“About half of the countries – 23 million people – need help, so the scales are extraordinary and it is a rapid crisis,” Samantha Mort, head of communication for UNICEF Afghanistan, told DW.

Pakistani Taliban supporters recently organized the peak of Islamic countries to raise funds for Afghanistan. US Secretary Antony Blinken praised the efforts of Islamabad to help Afghanistan, but did not say what the country planned to stabilize the Afghan economy.

Afghanistan suffers
The situation in Afghanistan, which has been a chaos since the Taliban took over, worsened even further because the country suffered from drought, forcing the family to sell everything, including their own children.

Mohammad Ibrahim, a resident of Kabul, told DW that he had no choice but to offer his 7-year-old daughter, Jamila, for his family’s debt. “Someone comes and tells me to pay debt or ‘I will burn your house to ashes,” Ibrahim said. But he was offered the opportunity to “give up his daughter,” to pay his debt.

“The man is a rich person,” he said. “And I have no other choice and I received to offer my child in return for 65,000 Afghanistan (almost € 620, $ 700) debt.”

This is a glimpse of the ongoing humanitarian crisis in the country supported by the US for two decades.