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Afghanistan 'at brink of economic collapse', warns Pakistan
Shah Mehmood Qureshi spoke at the opening of the so-called "troika plus" meeting, which included Thomas West, the new US special envoy for Afghanistan. The delegates are also expected to meet later Thursday with Taliban foreign minister Amir Khan Muttaqi.
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In this photograph taken on October 28, 2021, an Afghan burqa-clad woman carries a sack of harvested cotton along a mud-house at Dawlatabad District, Balkh province. In the villages that once bore the brunt of Afghanistan's frontline fighting, the Taliban victory has broken a cycle of air strikes, gun battles and funerals. (AFP/Wakil Kohsar)
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fghanistan is "at the brink of economic collapse" and the international community must urgently resume funding and provide humanitarian assistance, Pakistan's foreign minister warned Thursday at a meeting with US, Chinese, Russian and Taliban diplomats in Islamabad.
Shah Mehmood Qureshi spoke at the opening of the so-called "troika plus" meeting, which included Thomas West, the new US special envoy for Afghanistan. The delegates are also expected to meet later Thursday with Taliban foreign minister Amir Khan Muttaqi.
"Today, Afghanistan stands at the brink of an economic collapse," Qureshi said in remarks opening the meeting, adding that any further downward slide would "severely limit" the new Taliban government's ability to run the country.
"It is, therefore, imperative for the international community to buttress provision of humanitarian assistance on an urgent basis," he said.
That included enabling Afghanistan to access funds frozen by Western donors since the Taliban took control of the country in August, he said.
Resuming the flow of funding "will dovetail into our efforts to regenerate economic activities and move the Afghan economy towards stability and sustainability", Qureshi said.
Doing so would benefit Western countries also, he argued in later comments to state media.
