

Roughly $512 million of this sum is from the United States, including $70 million from USAID earmarked for trauma care and essential health services household cash assistance shelter, water, sanitation, and hygiene and programs to reunite children with families. Will we now turn away?Īt the much-anticipated UN donor aid conference in March, the UN’s appeal for $4.4 billion for Afghanistan drew just $2.44 billion in pledges. Today, as poverty and starvation stalk Afghanistan, the international community is struggling with its distaste for engagement with a new government whose policies it cannot condone.

Later, I too had the opportunity to give back, when I accepted a position there with The Asia Foundation. It was his way of staying connected and giving back to Afghanistan.
Path of exile website us free#
My father later returned to establish a medical clinic, where for a month every year for three decades he provided free medical care to anyone in need. When he felt it was safe, he called on us to join him, and our family was grateful to eventually find refuge in Canada as landed immigrants.īut despite this bitter exile, we always understood that we were not turning away from our homeland. My father joined the exodus to Pakistan, where he trained nurses and provided emergency medical care to Afghan refugees with the International Rescue Committee. Seventeen members of our family, including uncles and cousins, were killed in rapid succession. Like other influential Afghans, he was targeted for elimination. My father was a physician and director of epidemiology at the University of Nangarhar. The current humanitarian crisis is a painful reminder to me of the political violence unleashed by the Soviet invasion in 1979, and the painful losses my own family faced as we were forced to flee the country. Ninety-five percent have too little food, and over nine million, many of them children, are on the brink of starvation. Basic healthcare, education, and other vital services are “ severely strained,” according to the UN, which warns that 97 percent of Afghans will be living below the poverty line next year. The economy, long dependent on foreign aid, is collapsing, and livelihoods are vanishing.

