The latest western efforts to boost cash flows into Afghanistan will do little to tackle the country’s growing humanitarian crisis without wider reforms to get money to ordinary people, aid agencies have warned.
The US and the UK Treasury have both issued clarifications in the past few days in a bid to reassure banks that payments for basic human needs including food, health and education will not violate sanctions against the Taliban leaders who seized power last year.
But aid agencies say the effect will be modest without the release of frozen Afghan central bank reserves to restore interbank lending and foreign exchange transactions, stimulate a resurgence of the banking sector and an unblocking of donor funds locked by the World Bank to kick-start the economy.