After months the office reopens, attacked
There are those who have tried to flee since August, when the crowds to enter Kabul airport painted the last images of the Americans leaving the scene, along with the 150 people killed by an attack as they crowded in hopes of leaving before the US troops permanently leave the country. Now, after a few months’ hiatus, the Taliban are trying to show their greater familiarity with the state car they have appropriated by resuming the issuance of passports in three regions. However, tensions are still high, witnesses report pressure from the Taliban on the crowd of hundreds of people lined up to avoid the ideal conditions for a new Isis-K attack.
“All the technical problems are solved and the biometric equipment has been repaired,” said the head of the national passport service Alam Gul Haqqani. But for now, priority to those who had already submitted the application. ZC is not among them, a journalist who has been stranded in the east of the country who asks to remain anonymous for security reasons. “My life is in extreme danger here, because I was a journalist and I’m afraid of the Taliban,” she says. And he notes that “passports are expensive, I will need more than $ 1000 for the whole family.”
The most porous border remains that of neighboring Pakistan, while it is increasingly difficult to cross other sealed borders from Iran to Uzbekistan, precisely for fear of a wave of refugees. What is worrying above all is the economic collapse of Afghanistan, with state officials previously able to support entire extended families and now forced, along with many members of the middle class, to queue for the distribution of food. Many go to work despite being unpaid – around 70% of teachers, according to United Nations estimates. The poorest and most numerous Afghan families have seen conditions deteriorate also due to drought, in a country founded on subsistence agriculture that is not able to export to cities.
The crisis alarms neighbors and Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi, speaking in Islamabad during the 17th extraordinary session of the Council of Foreign Ministers of the Organization for Islamic Cooperation (OIC), said that nearly 23 million people in Afghanistan they suffer from lack of food, while millions of children risk dying from malnutrition. The United Nations underlined the urgent need for liquidity to stabilize the country’s banking system and allow humanitarian organizations to operate effectively. Health clinics operating in the country, from Doctors Without Borders to Emergency, report an increase in the presence of malnourished children.
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