I think this thread has veered off topic like a drunk on sunday night. Lets come back to the topic at hand:
1. Afghanistan was facing a famine long before the Taliban takeover
2. Afghanistan was and is still heavily dependant on aid for the various functions of state to operate
3. 35 million Afghans are food insecure, a 5kg bag of rice is 2800 Afghani (25 USD)
4. Afghan's are fuel insecure, many use cooking gas for heating and cooking, cooking gas prices have gone up 55% to 45 Afghani per KG.
5. Afghanistan is critically short of basic emergency medicine, with most hospitals run by NGOs such as Emergency NGO and MSF reporting they only have 1 week's supply, aid delivered by WHO through the Pakistan to Mazar-i-Sharif air bridge has provided 1 months supply to some hospitals this week, what happens after 1 week?
6. There is rampant job and financial insecurity in Afghanistan, this existed even before Aug 15th, but has been made worse recently.
7. The state had not paid former soldiers and police officers for over 3 months, many have resorted to selling their property in many of the pop-up flea markets in Afghanistan:
View attachment 780016
A friend who is presently in Kabul told me that people are selling belongings like Smart TVs worth 100,000 Afghani for 25,000 Afghani.
Finally and most importantly, the Taliban wants to be recognised, wants to be at the big boy table, but it fails to recognise that international partners look to work with people who can deliver, if the Taliban keep thinking they can run the show by appointing pointless mullah's to nonsensical posts, infringe fundamental human rights such as education, the right to work, the freedom of speech and the right to freedom from torture, degrading and inhumane treatment.
Coupled with and most importantly, the inability to manage the slowly growing insurgency from ISISK, well then the Taliban will soon find the honeymoon period will come to an abrupt end and this cute little side project they have going will come to an abrupt end.
