US Faces Sanctions Issues, Challenging Humanitarian Task in Afghanistan, Experts say
Although the U.S. should continue to impose severe sanctions against the Taliban, some collaboration with Afghanistan and other adversaries in the Middle East may be required to deliver humanitarian aid to Afghan citizens, experts said.
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Melanne Verveer, a former ambassador for global women’s issues under the Obama administration, questioned whether the U.S. and other allies have the resources to effectively deliver aid. “The bank accounts have been rightly frozen, but we have to be thinking strategically,” Verveer said during an Aug. 25 event hosted by the Atlantic Council. “How are we going to get humanitarian resources in to the people who need them, and not into the hands of the Taliban, who may never extend them to where the need is.”
Mark Malloch-Brown, a former United Nations official, said “so many of the cards” in the Middle East are held by China, Russia, Pakistan, Iran and others. He said the U.S., the United Kingdom and other North Atlantic Treaty Organization countries will likely have to work with them to provide aid.
“We have to get to a political process which includes them, too,” said Malloch-Brown, who also is the president of Open Society Foundations, a private funder of human rights advocacy groups. “We've got to get that because without it, issues like humanitarian access are going to be very, very difficult to secure and address.” He added that “there's a real risk the Taliban government recognizes early on that it’s going to be sanctioned by the West, ignored by the West,” and therefore may not cooperate on humanitarian issues. “We've got to use as much active diplomacy as possible around the humanitarian and human rights agenda initially to try and build a contact group of governments who are willing to work on an agenda for Afghanistan.”
He also said the U.S. and others should be wary of Chinese attempts to increase its influence in Afghanistan now that the Taliban controls the country’s government. “China is now looking at the last piece of the puzzle of its Belt and Road Initiative falling into place: Afghanistan,” Malloch-Brown said. “There'll be a ton of potential Chinese investment coming in and they will want to sort of fill that economic space.”