The humanitarian aid announced by India for the struggling population of Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, which has been stuck in limbo due to Pakistan, may finally reach the starving people.
This after Islamabad, climbed down from its demand of using Pakistani trucks to transport the 50,000 metric tonnes of wheat to Afghanistan.?
Pakistan said on Friday that it would allow Indian aid to pass through on Afghan trucks, dropping an earlier demand that Pakistani trucks be used.
Foreign Office said in a statement that the decision to let New Delhi send wheat and life-saving drugs to Afghanistan through Pakistan on Afghan trucks was formally conveyed to India.
¡°With a view to further facilitate Pakistan's decision to allow transportation of 50,000 MT of wheat and life-saving medicines from India to Afghanistan via Wagah border on an exceptional basis for humanitarian purposes, it has been decided to also allow the use of Afghan trucks for transportation from Wagah border to Torkham,¡± it said.
India which had announced the humanitarian aid last month had proposed to dispatch the wheat supply using its own trucks. New Delhi had made it clear that it wanted to ensure that the aid reaches the needy and is distributed through the UN Food Programme.
However, Pakistan which initially agreed to allow the aid to transit through the country, but attached a condition that only Pakistan trucks will be allowed to ship the wheat and life-saving drugs from the Indian border all the way to Afghanistan.
On Thursday, India said that discussions with Pakistan are going on to finalise the modalities for the transportation of its aid to Afghanistan through Pakistani soil and insisted that no conditionalities should be attached for sending the humanitarian assistance.
In New Delhi, Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) spokesperson Arindam Bagchi said that humanitarian assistance should not be subject to conditionalities.
Experts have warned that, if the weather is as poor as predicted this winter, millions of people including children are likely to face acute hunger and widespread famine in war-torn Afghanistan, which is now ruled by the Taliban.
According to UN figures from early November, almost 24 million people in Afghanistan, around 60 per cent of the population, suffer from acute hunger.
That includes 8.7 million living in near- famine. Increasing numbers of malnourished children have filled hospital wards.
India has contributed to the humanitarian requirements of the Afghan people. This included providing more than 1 million metric tonnes of wheat to Afghanistan over the past decade.
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