Mullah Muhammad Hassan Akhund, who unilaterally installed the Prime Minister of Afghanistan, called on Afghans to show gratitude to the Taliban leadership. The Taliban chief minister, who is not recognized by the international community, said in a press conference on Saturday evening that the new policy is not the cause of economic downturn, famine and unemployment in the country. He says the blame lies with the previous government. This was reported by international news agencies. It was the prime minister’s first speech since the Taliban took power in Afghanistan three months ago.
The Taliban will now do everything in their power to fix the economic crisis and the corruption of the previous government. The prime minister said that halting international aid to the government since the acquisition and blocking billions of dollars in Afghan bank deposits abroad are hampering this. So Akhund wants to release about $9 billion in frozen overseas banking assets.
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A week after the acquisition at the end of August, the World Bank announced that it would freeze assets from an international fund where the former government of Afghanistan could apply to pay for health care, for example. The World Bank did so because of “serious concerns” about “the country’s development prospects, especially for women.” Other donors have also frozen assets. The United Nations warned in October of a humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan. For example, according to the United Nations, more and more people in the country are at risk of starvation.
On Saturday, Mullah Akhund responded to accusations of violating women’s rights that the Taliban had “saved women’s dignity”. The Taliban did not completely exclude women from the public sphere as they did during the previous rule in the late 1990s. However, female government employees are no longer welcome in their jobs and girls are no longer allowed to go to secondary school.
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