An Islamic trust fund for Afghanistan. They didn’t officially recognize the Taliban government. They didn’t even allow the Taliban’s foreign minister to appear in the official group photograph. But foreign ministers from the 57-member Organization of Islamic Cooperation, the second-largest intergovernmental organization after the UN, met in Islamabad on Sunday and pledged to set up a trust fund to address the worsening humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan. Neither the exact amount of the fund nor the contributions by member countries was released, but may not match the $4.5 billion that the UN has appealed for aid to Afghanistan amid warnings that the Afghan economy is in a free-fall, with 23 million facing starvation. The lead organization of the fund will be the Islamic Development Bank, the OIC’s in-house global lender.
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What We're Watching: OIC cash for Afghanistan
Afghanistan's acting Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi is seen during the 17th extraordinary session of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) Council of Foreign Ministers on the Afghanistan situation, in Islamabad, Pakistan December 19, 2021.
REUTERS/Waseem Khan
By Wajahat S. KhanDecember 20, 2021
Wajahat S. Khan
Wajahat Saeed Khan is a former contributor for GZERO Media. He is an independent journalist based in New York City, who has been covering Pakistan for over 20 years.
