Floods, landslides and storms have aggravated the already serious humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan. Earlier drought conditions had troubled many farmers and villages. In 2023 a series of earthquakes killed thousands of people and caused other massive damage, particularly in Herat.
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Outbreak of Iran war on February 28, as well as preceding disturbances, further increased the problems of Afghanistan by causing trade disruptions on land routes. Earlier these were aggravated on the other long border also due to prolonged hostilities with Pakistan. When there are disturbances on the land borders with two main neighboring countries, the problems of a landlocked country like Afghanistan can be imagined. In the course of recent hostilities with Pakistan, there have been several airstrikes on Afghanistan. One of these on March 16 resulted in a great tragedy as a very large number of people died or were injured in the Omid de-addiction center; according to the Afghanistan government nearly 400 persons died in this attack. Other estimates mention a lesser number, but the number of dead and injured persons has been quoted at very high levels in most estimates.
Pakistan and Iran have also expelled a very large number of refugees from Afghanistan, forcing them to return to their home country at a time when it is already faced with a serious humanitarian crisis. According to recent estimates, over 5 million refugees have returned from Pakistan and Iran during the last 30 months or so. Thus while in most serious humanitarian crisis situations we see refugees going out in large numbers, here we see a reverse situation of over 5 million people returning.
According to a recent United Nations report dated March 9, 2026at least 17.1 million persons needed humanitarian assistance in Afghanistan (this was a very conservative estimate and the figure had been deliberately kept low keeping in view a serious shortage of resources).For this 1.71 billion dollars were estimated to be needed but at the time of preparing this report only about 10% of this budget had been arranged.
The situation in Afghanistan deteriorated with the departure of US forces in August 2021 as many development aid and humanitarian aid programs of the USA and its allies were stopped while many sanctions were also imposed. Thus assistance as well as salaries of a large number of people stopped at a time when weather conditions were also very adverse. A national drought was declared in 2021, the worst in the last 30 years or so. In June 2023 UN-OCHA reported that the World Food Program had to cut food assistance to 8 million food-insecure people here due to fund constraints.
Hence several factors have combined together to create a situation in which the need for the USA to speed up the transfer of 7 billion dollars of Afghanistan held there for several years have increased. This urgency has increased further in the increasingly difficult conditions of 2026.
This transfer should not be delayed any longer. If the delay is due to apprehensions of any of this being put for dangerous uses, then a UN committee of persons known to be entirely sympathetic to the needs of the people of Afghanistan and committed to peace can be set up and on the basis of their monitoring these funds can be transferred for meeting humanitarian and development needs over a period of about two years, with at least 2 billion dollars being sent more or less immediately to meet urgent needs. Let us also not forget the basic fact that these are Afghanistan funds..
In June 2022 the International Federation of Red Cross had said that 70% of the people here are unable to meet essential food and non-food needs. Earlier in 2022 the UN Secretary General had expressed concern at the “epichumanitarian crisis on the verge of a development catastrophe.”
Source: Global Research
