Callous Imran Khan blocks Indian wheat from reaching starving Afghans

New Delhi, Dec 30: A callous Imran Khan government is refusing to allow Indian wheat shipments to Afghanistan pass through Pakistans territory at a time when the United Nations has warned that nearly half of Afghanistan's population is starving.

The Imran Khan government has been dilly dallying over the proposal to allow Indian wheat and medicines to reach the people of Afghanistan even as Khan himself has been asking the world to help Afghanistan.

According to Khaama Press, an Afghan news agency, last week during the visit to Islamabad, the Foreign Minister of Taliban regime had asked Imran Khan to allow the shipment of 50,000 tonnes of Indian wheat and life-saving medicines to pass through its territory. After getting the promise from Khan, the Taliban authorities made an arrangement for trucks which would carry the wheat from Wagah on the India-Pakistan border to Kabul but the proposal could not move forward.

According to Indian officials, the proposal to send wheat and medicines via Wagah border was sent to the Pakistani government on October 7 and more than a month later Pakistan acknowledged receiving the proposal. First Pakistan said that it would not allow the Indian trucks to go to Kabul via Pakistan. Then after a few days Imran Khan said that India should hire Pakistani trucks which will carry the wheat from Wagah to Kabul under UN supervision but this suggestion was rejected by India.

Finally, on December 3, the Imran Khan government said that it will allow Indian relief materials to be shipped via the border crossing only in Afghan trucks but with the condition that the entire process of shipment of 50,000 tonnes of wheat and other relief materials should be completed by December 31. However, it is impossible to accomplish the task of carrying such a huge consignment of goods in such a short period. The Indian government conveyed this problem to Pakistan, but so far there has been no response from Islamabad.

India has so far sent 1.6 tonnes of life-saving medicines to Afghanistan on a special charter flight to Kabul on December 11. The flight brought 104 people, most of them Afghan Sikhs and Hindus, from Kabul to New Delhi, and returned with 85 Afghan nationals who were stranded in India following the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan in mid-August.