SHAFAQNA- A senior Red Cross official said that sanctions and donor freezes are stoking the Afghan crisis and cutting off basic services. Humanitarian workers say that U.N. and unilateral sanctions on the Taliban, which seized power in August, are causing confusion and hesitation among donors despite some efforts to grant licenses to ease aid flows.
Dominik Stillhart, Operators Director for the International Committee of the Red Cross, said the charity this week began paying salaries and distributing medical supplies to 18 medical facilities in Afghanistan to prevent them from collapsing.
“I am livid,” he said on Monday in a statement from Kabul after a six-day field visit to hospitals. “As winter sets in, policies that were meant to avoid supporting those in power are now instead freezing out millions of Afghans from the very basic needs they require to survive”, Reuters reported.
He described visiting a paediatric ward in Kandahar where three children were squeezed in each bed with the number of incidents of severe malnutrition, pneumonia and dehydration have doubled from August and September. Hospital workers who had not been paid for months are walking to work for two hours because they cannot afford transport to work, he added, Hamraahe Pakistan mentioned.