Trump halts foreign aid, risks Afghan crisis

The head of a major humanitarian group said US President Donald Trump's order to halt foreign aid for 90 days would have immediate and disastrous consequences in Afghanistan where relief operations are already stretched thin.
As he took office, Trump ordered a temporary pause in foreign development aid pending assessments of efficiencies and consistency with his foreign policy.
The scope of the order was not clear, including whether it applied to Afghanistan's humanitarian funding, which is channelled through NGOs and United Nations agencies.
Jan Egeland, the secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), said that the decision had left agencies reeling as they braced for further cuts from the biggest donor to Afghanistan.
"A 90-day suspension of all aid, no new grants, no new transfer of funding, will have disastrous consequences immediately for an already starved aid operation for very poor and vulnerable girls and women and civilians in Afghanistan," he said during a video interview from Kabul.
The war-torn nation is home to more than 23 million people requiring humanitarian assistance - more than half the country's population - but aid has shrunk as donors face competing global crises and diplomats raise concerns about the Taliban's restrictions on women in most areas of public life, including education.
Development funding that formed the backbone of government finances was cut after the Taliban took over and foreign forces left in 2021.
Last year non-governmental groups played a critical role in filling the humanitarian void.
Trump told a rally shortly before taking office that aid to Afghanistan would be contingent on getting back billions of dollars of military equipment that US forces left behind.
The Taliban have also banned Afghan women from working at NGOs since 2022, reiterating that position in a second announcement late last year.
Egeland said that in practice his organisation and others were able to work around the restrictions.
But a lack of funding puts those jobs at risk.