Last month, the United Nations put out a funding appeal asking for more than $5 billion of aid for Afghanistan, the largest such appeal ever for a single country. Since the Taliban took over last August, the country’s economy has crumbled and its currency has lost about 20 percent of its value. The evacuation of foreign humanitarian workers and the freezing of government funds by Western countries that refuse to recognize the Taliban government set the stage for the crisis, and an especially untimely drought have made matters worse.
John Gustavsson is a Swedish conservative writer with a Ph.D. in economics, with past experience as a policy adviser and researcher in the European Parliament.
