Tomorrow may be too late

EDITORIAL: The much-awaited Muslim World’s response to the hunger-stricken Afghans’ suffering of biblical dimensions materialized in the OIC Foreign Ministers Council meeting in Islamabad on Sunday, and regrettably it was quite disappointing. The delegates looked at tomorrow’s Afghanistan, and not of today’s, which is standing on the brink of total annihilation. The mechanisms evolved by the conference are essentially of bureaucratic nature subject to efficient banking which is not there and to be supervised by others and independent of inputs by the Taliban now in uncontested power in Afghanistan. Realistically speaking, how can you bypass the Taliban who fought for twenty years and defeated the history’s most powerful war machine? Of course, the conference did set up a few channels to receive and manage foreign assistance, but the crisis here is of imminent nature. And if the hesitation on the part of the delegates was the issue of recognition of Taliban’s de facto government, they should have called upon the international community not to hold aid to starving Afghans hostage to Taliban’s outmoded governance. It would be unrealistic to think that Taliban would instantly give up on their ideology. They will change, as they have since their last round in power, but not as quickly death comes to the starving millions in Afghanistan. They have no political religion; they are just Afghans and suffered for three generations for none of their faults. According to OIC Secretary General Hissein Brahim Taha, since the banking system of Afghanistan is not functional and in the absence of a proper mechanism for channelizing the monetary assistance by member-states was not possible a “Trust” set up for Afghanistan would serve as a vehicle to pass on the humanitarian assistance where it is needed. Its funding would be handled by the Islamic Development Bank, and hopefully operationalize by the first quarter of next year. The “Afghanistan Food Security Programme” will be jointly managed by the OIC and the United Nations. On the political front, the OIC Foreign Ministers’ Council did not discuss the Taliban call for recognition of its government, but called upon it to “respect its commitments and abide by the charter of the OIC”. However, in his address, Prime Minister Imran Khan was more specific: “It is time now to delink the Taliban government from its 40 million citizens at a time when chaos would see the country fail to fight terrorism”. Only an economically stable government in Kabul can fight and defeat extremist entities, he said. The chair of the session, Foreign Minister of Saudi Arabia, Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud, was also of the same view. He believes Afghanistan’s economic difficulties could trigger a humanitarian crisis and “lead to further instability which could impact regional and international peace”. That in case of today’s Afghanistan time is of the essence is a fact. If fellow Muslim countries don’t reach out to the starving millions today tomorrow may be too late.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2021