Since the Talibans takeover of Afghanistan in mid-August, the economy has seen a major crash. The Afghanistan economy has been said to all but collapsed at this point and has led to a bigger problem being a humanitarian crisis. Before there was aid from other countries that essentially propped up the economy, but now that money has vanished, and state assets are frozen along with economic sanctions have isolated the economy from global banking. This has led to a cash shortage that is leading to the demise of many businesses and banks. This has also led to prices sky rocketing leading to the bigger problem being the humanitarian crisis that it is triggering. A report from the WHO warned around 3.2 million children would likely suffer from malnutrition in Afghanistan. To add to it, 1 million of the 3.2 are even predicted to die as temperatures drop. Countries such as the United States have provided aid, but to the near borders in other countries. It will be interesting to see how the new leadership in the Taliban look to deal with both of these problems, if they deal with them at all. The biggest issue is first the humanitarian crisis, but if they don't fix the economic system the system may never be able to be the same and the humanitarian crisis might just continue to get worse.
2 comments:
I agree that the Taliban need to fix their economic system in order to fix their humanitarian crisis. The aid that Afghanistan has received in the past has benefited them greatly but now that they do not have that aid or a lot of money of their own, the people will suffer.
If the Taliban's true intentions is to gain legitimacy as a political force to rebuild Afghanistan, fixing the economic situation would be a major first test. But I think there should still be an expectation that this current regime is similar to the one that was in control before the U.S. invasion in the early 2000s. This means that they are more than likely to take advantage of the situation to garner loyalty from the civilians for scraps of food and water.
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