Report from Kabul: NRC Head Jan Egeland on Global Aid Cuts, Poverty & Taliban Repression of Women

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In the five years since the Taliban regained control of Afghanistan following the complete withdrawal of U.S. troops from the country, millions of Afghan refugees have been forced out of neighboring Iran and Pakistan, where they had been living and "dumped at the border" without immediate access to food, water or shelter. At the same time, conditions for women and girls in Afghanistan continue to deteriorate, as basic rights to education, freedom of movement and access to services are increasingly curtailed under the Taliban's authoritarian rule. "It's a crisis for humanity," says Jan Egeland, secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council, speaking to Democracy Now! from Kabul. "We're so overstretched and underfunded. … We're too alone on the ground here in Afghanistan," explains Egeland, one of the few international aid workers continuing to support displaced people in the country. "The reason we have to lay off female aid workers, female teachers, teaching primary school girls, is because of lack of funding. It's not because of the Taliban."

Despite the outsized role it played in destabilizing the country, there has been "zero funding" this year from the U.S. to humanitarian organizations operating in Afghanistan. "Don't forget your promises when you went for the door abruptly five years ago," Egeland says, addressing the United States and other, largely European, countries that made up the U.S.-led NATO coalition in Afghanistan.

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