Share this
Monday: Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan announces that his government will allow the aid sent by India to pass through Pakistan via land for Afghanistan. India announced 50,000 metric tons of wheat as humanitarian assistance after the UN’s announcement of food shortage and risk of food crisis in Afghanistan. India expressed its displeasure with Pakistan’s delay in granting help. Pakistan only allows one-way trade from Afghanistan to India and not the other way around.
The transportation of the wheat would be started once the modalities are finalized with the Indian side,” the Pakistan PM’s office said, adding that Pakistan has also decided to facilitate “the return of Afghan patients who had gone to India for medical treatment and are stuck there”.
Pakistan’s announcement received no response from the Ministry of External Affairs. Arindam Bagchi, a spokesperson for the Ministry of External Affairs, said on November 11 that India was looking into all options for transferring the help, “but there have been challenges due to a lack of unrestricted access.”
Officials declined to comment when asked why India did not send the supplies through Iran’s Chabahar port to the Afghan border, as it has done in recent years, but hinted that the route would be too tortuous given the acute need in Afghanistan.
A delegation from the Ministry of External Affairs made a formal offer of wheat and other medical supplies to the Taliban leadership on October 20 when they met Taliban Deputy Prime Minister Abdul Salam Hanafi at the Moscow format conference in Russia.
According to a Taliban spokeswoman, senior MEA official J.P. Singh stated during the meeting that India was eager to help Afghanistan with “huge humanitarian assistance” during its “period of difficulties.” Since the Taliban rule took control of Kabul on August 15, the meeting was one of just two officially announced meetings with the Taliban regime.