[Crowds brave sub-zero temperatures
after Taliban announces it will resume issuing travel documents]
By Patrick Wintour and
agencies
Many began their wait the previous night
and most stood patiently in single file – some desperate to leave the country
for medical treatment, others to escape the Islamists’ renewed rule.
Tense Taliban personnel
periodically charged crowds that formed at the front of the queue and at a
nearby roadblock.
“We don’t want any suicide attack
or explosion to happen,” said a Taliban security operative, Ajmal Toofan, 22,
expressing concerns about the dangers of crowding.
The local branch of the Islamic
State group, the Taliban’s
principal enemy, killed more than 150 people in late August when citizens
massed at Kabul airport in a desperate effort to leave during the early days of
the new regime.
“Our responsibility here is to
protect people,” Toofan added, his gun pointed towards the ground. “But the
people are not cooperating.”
He spoke to Agence France-Presse as
one of his colleagues pushed a man, who then fell headlong just short of a coil
of barbed wire.
Mohammed Osman Akbari, 60, said he
was urgently trying to reach Pakistan because dilapidated hospitals at home
were unable to complete his heart surgery. Medics “put springs in my heart”, he
said, referring to a stent. “They need to be removed and it’s not possible
here.”
Nearby, ambulances containing
people too sick to queue were parked at the side of the road. “The patient has
a heart problem,” said an ambulance driver, Muslim Fakhri, 21, referring to a
43-year-old man lying on a stretcher inside his vehicle. An applicant had to be
present to ensure the passport is issued, he explained.
‘No one cares’
The Taliban initially stopped
issuing passports shortly after their return to power, which came as the
previous, western-backed regime imploded in the final stages of a US military
withdrawal. In October, authorities reopened the passport office in Kabul only
to suspend work days later as a flood of applications caused the biometric equipment
to break down.
The office said on Saturday that
the issue has been resolved and people whose applications were already being
processed could get their documents.
Mursal Rasooli, 26, said she was
happy to hear the news. “The situation here is not peaceful,” she told AFP,
hugging her two-year-old daughter Bibi Hawa to protect her against the biting
cold. “If the situation gets worse than this, then we have the passport” and
could flee, she said.
Her husband is in Iran because he
could not find work, she added, before expressing concern about skyrocketing
prices and a lack of jobs and education for women and girls.
Issuing passports – and allowing
people to leave amid a
humanitarian crisis the UN has called an “avalanche of hunger” – is
seen as a test of the Taliban’s commitment to the international community.
The Taliban are pressing donors to
restore billions of dollars in aid that was suspended when they came to power.
A local musician, Omid Naseer, sporting a leather jacket, short beard and
unkempt hair, was desperate to leave. For “months now, since the Taliban came
[to power], we’ve had no work”, he said. “The artists are most vulnerable, but
no one cares.”
Meanwhile, Muslim nations resolved
on Sunday to work with the United Nations to try to unlock hundreds of millions
of dollars in frozen Afghan assets in a bid to tackle a growing humanitarian
crisis.
At a special meeting in Pakistan of
the 57-member Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) delegates said they
would work “to unlock the financial and banking channels to resume liquidity
and flow of financial and humanitarian assistance”.
The meeting was the biggest
conference on Afghanistan since the US-backed government fell in August and the
Taliban returned to power.
Martin Griffiths, the secretary
general of the UN’s humanitarian affairs agency, told the meeting: “We need
continued constructive engagement with the de facto authorities in a process of
meaningful dialogue to clarify what we expect of each other.
“The consequences of inaction are
clear: Afghanistan will collapse, people will run out of hope, and the region –
and indeed the world – will see destabilisation increase. Afghanistan’s economy
is now in freefall and if we don’t act decisively and with compassion, I fear
this fall will pull the entire population with it.
“Twenty-three million people are
already facing hunger; health facilities are overflowing with malnourished
children; some 70% of teachers are not getting paid and millions of children –
Afghanistan’s future – are out of school.
“The value of the Afghani currency
is plummeting, trade is wrecked by lack of confidence in the financial sector,
and the space for borrowing and investment has constricted dramatically.”
A draft roadmap of the steps the
Taliban need to take before sanctions are lifted has been drawn up and has the
support of Germany and Qatar. It is likely to be raised on the margins of a
meeting in London on Monday between the British foreign secretary, Liz Truss,
and members of the Gulf Cooperation Council.
