Taliban’s Acting Prime Minister Mullah Hasan Akhund has urged the international community to start giving recognition to its regime as the Islamist group struggles to gain legitimacy even after five months of its return to power. The call for recognition comes at a time when the country has been going through a deadly humanitarian crisis.

"I ask all governments, especially Islamic countries, that they should start recognition," Mullah Hasan Akhund said in his first press conference after becoming the prime minister in September last year. He insisted that their regime has fulfilled all the demands of the international community that were required for a formal recognition, a claim disputed by many, including Afghans.

Since August 2021, when the group first returned to power, no country, including its presumed benefactor Pakistan, has given formal recognition to the Taliban, and the country’s $8 billion in the national reserves, mostly in the US, remain blocked.

On Wednesday, at a press conference that showed the regime's growing desperation, which was also attended by UN officials in Kabul, Akhund and other Taliban leaders appealed for easing restrictions on money into the country, blaming its growing economic crisis on the freezing of its funds.

"Short-term aid is not the solution; we must try to find a way to solve problems fundamentally," he said. It came after the UN Secretary-General António Guterres also urged for making exceptions for tackling what experts suggest could soon turn into a humanitarian catastrophe.

"Humanitarian aid is the short-term solution to economic problems, but what is needed to solve problems, in the long run, is the implementation of infrastructure projects," Taliban’s acting Foreign Minister Ameer Khan Muttaqi said.

Almost 57 percent of Afghans are facing acute food shortages amid the severe winter. The new rulers, the Taliban, remain intransigent, refusing to deliver on hauman rights, gender rights, and an inclusive government, a deadlock that is prolonging the crisis with multiplying disastrous effects.

Speaking on Thursday last week, the UN chief said that it’s critical to rapidly inject liquidity into the Afghan economy “and avoid a meltdown that would lead to poverty, hunger and destitution for millions.” Calling the freezing temperature and acute hunger a “lethal combination”, he warned that millions were on the verge of death.  [Read More]