nasa has confirmed us parker solar probe, which is orbiting the sun has touched it for the 1st time on a recent fly by the pro dipped into the upper atmosphere also called the corona. astronomers learned for the 1st time the corona has spikes on depths. it's a discovery that could help further understand solar whether the probe will continue until 2025. ah. hello again. the headlines on al jazeera. we have breaking news from hong kong where at least 150 people are trapped in the city. is world trade center because if a fire 5 people have been sent to hospital, it broke out on the 1st floor of the building in an area that was under renovation . bertha wank is a journalist in hong kong and has from the scene and it is leased out on the 1st floor on i'm not sure. but the reason i'm there, asian,

and so far as i know, that over 200 people at the risk over what people were asked. and there are still wanted to be restless, at least over in your sense. and right now i can see that many people are walking out from shopping rescue to fix the world. health organization says the cove in 1900 on the kron very, and just spreading faster than any other strain before us. it's worn, there'll be no end to the pandemic. if wealthy nations continue offering boosters at the expense of poor countries, or chris or the u. s. candle factory, where 8 people were killed in a tornado say they were told they'd be fired if they left. management denies this chinese leader, she jumping and rushing counterpart vladimir putin are holding a virtual summit. they are discussing bilateral relations and international issues . it comes amid rising tensions between moscow in the west,

over the massing of tens of thousands of russian troops near its border with ukraine. the u. s. house of representatives voted to hold former white house, chief of staff, mark meadows in contempt of congress. meadows refuse to attend to hearing into the january 6 capitol hill right last week, despite being subpoenaed us politicians have voted to raise the federal debt limits within hours of the treasury's deadline. the vote avoided a major credit default. it raises the boring calf by 2 and a half trillion dollars. germany's new chancellor, olaf schoultz is delivering his 1st speech in the top job right now, he's been urging all germans to get vaccinated, warning his administration will have no red lines when tackling covered 19. those are the headlines on al jazeera, more news coming up at the top of the hour. that's after the stream. bye bye. ah

. knowledge is here. with me. oh. hi, anthony ok. you're watching the stream on today's episode where checking in on afghanistan, where 80 percent of the country is impacted by drought. the economy is flailing due to sanctions. unemployment is on the rise. salaries are being paid and millions of people are facing food insecurity. they will go hungry this winter. there is so much to talk about all this solutions. this is what i want you to be part of our program. you can ask our panel anything to do with afghanistan. i know they will do that best to answer you, but your comments right here in the comment sake should be part of today's should.

ah and meet our panel ali shelly silla mind so good to happy on the stream alley. welcome back. please remind out audio who you are, what you do. i'm ali latifah. i am the online correspondent for al jazeera english covering of on the sun. get to have you had i shelly, welcome back to the stream. we might at least he you are. and what you day who would have been spokesperson for afghanistan based in cobbled it to hattie selim. i welcome to the stream. introduce yourself. try international audience. yours, solomon. hello, i'm solomon. ben shaw. i was the humanist with industry in commerce until august, 15 this year of honest, i'm, i'm going to start guess with deborah lyons. she's the un secretary general, special representative for afghanistan. i want to ask you what you feel is the most

pressing problem. challenge to afghanistan is facing right now. this is deborah lyons and she points her finger at the economy. let's have a look better valesa. the financial sanctions applied to afghanistan have paralyzed the banking system, affecting every aspect of the economy. g d p as contracted by an estimated 40 percent. cash is severely limited. traders cannot obtain letters of credit. people who have worked and save for years cannot access their savings. civil servants salaries cannot be paid in full if at all. hospitals are running out of medicine and turning away patients. prices have gone up as goods have become scarcer, instituting a punishing tax on the poorest and most vulnerable afghans. that is quite a list of the impact of sanctions. alley is that way you will start

a conversation today. is that the biggest, most pressing issue, the sanctions on afghanistan. yes, and i think miss lions actually put it perfectly, you know, all of the points that she had a prove. it shows exactly what has happened and only 4 or 5 months time. and the other thing that we have to point out is that she made the statement that the united nations and many of the bodies and nations involved in the decision that led to the sanction were in attendance at the united nations, are members of the united nations are affiliated with the united nations, and yet it seems like all of these calls are falling on deaf ears. you know, i, she said this has amounted to attack on the poorest people. it's not the top on leadership but suffering. you know, the toll about leadership lived for years and don't with no problems. they lived into by their families, lived into buy. they had shelter need on, they had shelter and focused on they had no problems financially and they have no problem financially now. but the people have problems financially and waterfront

currently are the citizens of the sun, including what would have been called the quote unquote middle class. only 6 months ago. it's the poorest of the poor and even people, people like silly mom who would have had like, stable, you know, decent jobs of some kind of an income. now, you know, they don't know, you know, how much longer they can afford to feed their families or pay their rent sentiment . you've got to speak up, i'll put you into the station. go ahead. thanks for. first of all, thanks for having me. of the list of problems that you know are mentioned in the report. and now by ali, i think his experience every day by everybody in of honest. and i've been speaking to many different people across of on his phone for the last 4 months. and the list of issues that come to us every day is sometimes beyond imagination. it's the people who had the end of the day or suffering political decisions made in a ball, though ha, washington, d, c,

and many other capitals of the world. and in that kind of has as developed this new conversation outside on the speed it up, people almost discussing whether we really need international relations, whether we really need engagement when the international community that the peace agreement signed in doha would result in to something like this. that the humanitarian catastrophe that you can see in of harness than we are experiencing and of understand is unfortunately in idly disgrace to the blood of mar tires, to the blood of people. auspicious lives that we have lost in the last 20 years, whether the american lives, the afghan lives, or any other lives, or who were sacrificed in, in, in the last one years. so it's i believe in right now, or whenever there is a talk and people try to hide the real problem of, you know, people suffering in a varnish thought,

which was in the past. and we have so many challenges in the future without keeping that in consideration. in just focusing on political objectives makes it very, very hopeless for the of one nation and forth. shalley i've, i've got 2 thoughts i want to share with you. then you can bounce off than with what you're looking at right now in afghanistan like of our food program. to back here on my laptop, i've got martin on twitter. marine says, i don't see the usa suspending e l because at the end of the day, it's not the taliban who are suffering. they are starving innocent people that's happening now. and then i'm going to go to lecture at the university of afghanistan, who is working to bring food aid to people in afghanistan, have a listen to what he has to say. and then i'd love you to pick up and meet me afterwards. you started a food distribution campaign initially in cobble and then in provinces all around the finest on. our goal is to help families get through the difficult time. that's

the found that up on the songs guarantee facing we're trying to provide food that helps mothers and children to avoid malnourishment and starvation. but it's dawning upon us that is smart enough no matter what we do. now, unless the polar bond in the international community find their common humanity and understand that there is no politics that justifies this large scale of suffering. yeah, don't punish children, and it's an economically fall. and this catastrophe is the economy disintegrates. we've seen the currency drop by 25 percent bread. the cost of bread, it has doubled. that's a staple diet for families. we off w p. the whirlpool program has 15000000 people this year. we have to scale up to 23000000 people in 2022. it's winter. it's cold. when we meet people i was nothing,

but actually last week i met a farmer who told me i've lived through 19 governments, 19 governments. but i've never seen a day where it's so hard on me and my family, and this is, this was his birth time when he'd needed support from the world through program. so he has family have been affected by war. they've been affected by the drought. and now by the economic crisis, i asked him, well, surely there's piece now right. isn't that better? he looked at me and he said, what i'm facing at this moment, this hunger not being able to put food in front of my family. the war was probably better alley. i'm just looking at a post that you shared on twitter. and it's a, it's sir, a website that i recommend in a, in a twitter feed. i recommend everybody look at could every day kandahar say this is very common sight in afghan cities in couple people began doing this along some of

the busiest streets back in august and now we're in december. so he is this man. he's selling the last few bits and pieces in his house to feed his family. and you say, this is common. how common is allie and believably common? you know, it's when i was still in the m or it, you know, up until mid september, every street you would go on the biggest neighborhood in cobble. there would be people, you know, there would be, besides the streets, there would be refrigerator, the microwave and vacuum cleaners and dishes and knives and forks and rugs and carpets, just whatever people could find they were selling. and the one thing that i pointed out about that picture from everyday condo is, if you look at it, it's the bare bones left in his house. it's the most simple, most basic objects. you know, these weren't the refrigerators, these weren't a flat screen tv. these were the, you know, the rugs and the carpets. these were like the most basic, essential central,

the most basic supply. so what does that say? it says that he's down to the very last things in the house and be that he probably didn't have very much to begin with. because all of these problems that we're talking about, they existed over the last 20 years. but what's happened is that now they've compounded and they've sort of went into overdrive in just 4 months time. you know, the economy was already in shambles. it was already artificial. and then when you take away all of the, for the money and all of the aid, this is what you get. you get people selling literally the most basic supplies in their house to try and feed their children to sell the steam off the i m. s. about withholding money, and this is what they told us. i'm going to share part of this statement with you. i'm sure you're familiar with with was big organizations who previously put money into afghanistan. how are we drawing it right now? as is always the case, the i m f is guided by the views of the international community. this continues to

be a lack of clarity within the international community regarding recognition of a government in afghanistan, our engagement remains paused. sullivan. i think this is a perfect example of what i wanted to say earlier that we have reached a point the of the nation has reached your point. where believe me or not, we just don't want any engagement anymore. i mean, what, what did they engage been brought us in the 1st place in a we or the avalon people are now blame that, you know? simply because they could not get up stairs. you know, they could not get up against the or and taliban, the, the concord of honest on province by province. and finally came to an end finally into the cap, the, the presidential palace. and somehow i think the international community now expects that, you know, we would have the us forces were here. other nations were here,

the diplomatic personnel was here. your military were here and everything was happening right in front of our eyes. i simply remember august 15th, when i was getting out of the palace and i was making my way in the may. hm. back to my office. i think i can recall every single thing that i just said to you. we had an agreement seen, we saw an agreement in 2018 where thought bon said with the americans, tough negotiation staff negotiations for all parties involved. i believe was a recognition when they signed the piece deal. it was a recognition in that, in that time and, and so everything that followed is basically implementation of that document. if you look in referred to that document and we don't even know what the attic sees had but, but in my view, that was kind of recognition and whatever, you know happened often that augustine was,

was something probably unimaginable. i agree, you know, everybody knows this. everybody agrees to it, but there was some power sharing the agreement already agreed by the international community for thought about. so now seeing that there is absolutely no international recognition or something of the sort. i think this, this can be just a political excuse, but nothing gets shallow or on the welfare program. you are really adroit at working in politically. i want to put this carefully, politically sensitive areas because you don't care. you just want to get through to people who really need it. some money has been released, the world food program are getting some money. how are you operating within this? i can, i say, no man's land of politics. geo politics. that is happening around afghanistan, which is shut down a lot of the funding that you normally would have been able to count on the people conversed and

w p on the ground we've been here for 60 years. we work nonstop relentlessly, round the clock across all 34 provinces. we've got food already. preposition because of the winter. so we know when our roads get cut off because of snow, we'll be able to get to people when we do receive funds. and often what we do is some of it's in kind and so we buy the food and the food comes in. and then that's taken to people who need our emergency assistance the most. um, so what we're seeing now is being able to use also cash oversee cash is important. the people in afghanistan and anywhere in the world, it's dignities choice. they can, they can go to a shop, they can use vouchers, and we use, we do work with certain banking systems here as well. but what we, we have such generous donors. it's incredible. people who look to the local food program, look to the humanitarian crisis and say, what can we do? what do you need?

we need $220000000.00 a month and 2022 to be people. that is, that money is huge. but if you think about it, a $100.00 per person, that's all it takes to make sure that we avert a crisis and nobody stops. and we make sure that especially the women who have been traumatized by this crisis, they come to you and they look at you. one woman at one of our distribution sites came to me. she showed me her hands that cracked because she washes hands would probably be less than a 100 afghani a week. and she had 6 children and she said to me, i want to die. i haven't eaten for 2 days. i don't know what to feed my children. i can't pay my rent. what, what? you know, what, what's worth living for? audience i, i want to give you a reality check from the afghanistan operations coordinator for m s f. they spoke

to us a little bit earlier and just reminded us that sometimes the infrastructure of amazon is not particularly robust. so then when you add an economic sanctions on top of that, what are the people going to do? let's take a look at the health system. this is, there was a re re week like human resources. it was completely dependent on for him. and today, since that they call her because of the sanctions and the decisions from the donor to put on manageable to the country. so this problems has been made more actually today, winter is coming. it is urgent for. ready me to take out every barriers on being organized since august. in order to avoid that you may need to are in crisis in the meeting. i think

this conversation is almost unbearable. it must be unbearable if you're a citizen of afghanistan just to listen to. well, we've got winter, we've got a house system that's collapsing, people aren't being paid, the list goes on and on and on. how are people that you're speaking to? how are they even managing they're not, they feel like they're treading water, you know, and this is something that's very important to understand is that in, on a phone, especially over the last 20 years, there has always, unfortunately been massive poverty. you know, the system has never fully reached those most in need. but now we have a situation where it's those people that unfortunately have always suffered for the last 20 years. and then people who, as i said earlier, had some kind of economic advancement, had some level of a stable life who are literally wondering how long they can survive. because their cash is running out. and when your cash runs out and i want to san,

i don't care who you are, you're broke, you know, because in honest on cash is everything that's, that's how you pay for everything. that's how you live. that's how you survive. and what's most upsetting and it goes back to it. so the mano thing earlier is that, you know, all of these countries are meeting with the taller bond. they're sending their ambassadors, they're sending their representatives there. the u. s. is flying to doha, to meet with the taller bond, and yet they say, we don't want to engage with them. well, if you're talking to them, how is that non engagement but also fine? you don't want to engage them. you don't want to recommend them don't. but in 5 months, you haven't figured out a single way to make sure that the most the most in need people, the most. i imagine this woman coming and saying, i want to die. you know, she has children, that's the most, you know, honest law make on the avalon thing to say, but it's the thing out of desperation. yeah. you know, and it's been 5 months later, and none of these countries and the, you and the, you and, and all these places cannot figure out how to deliver

a to people. i want to, i want being a president, mccall, france and he because he also sounds a little bit confused, but he was trying to bring some clarity to the situation in afghanistan. so this is him talking in doha, on december 4th. they just a couple of days ago, periods the next little present, as shown today, our representation in afghanistan is being done by our ambassadors from paris. but we're thinking of an organization as you know, among several european countries. and so our approach would be in conditions that remains be identified. but in particular, in terms of security, with the idea of having a common location for several europeans where our ambassadors and our administrators could be presence. let me remind you, this is a different day march than a political recognition or political dialogue with the taliban. it you did. a pretty typically did it on. it's like, well, we want to be in, but we don't want to support the taliban government. so when you've been talking about this for, for the whole of this program is like how can you do a bit of recognizing but not fully recognizing must be very frustrating for you.

can i show you to headlines. both of them can be true at the same time, but i think this is probably, boy what he's holding up some of the international aid, say taliban rule not by killings. litany of abuses. according to the un. and then also from the taliban taliban forced marriage of women in afghanistan. that is now banned in terms of the human rights women's rights girls rights in afghanistan. right now, do you feel that there is enough that's happening, that will unlock funds that should be going to people in afghanistan? so i'll have a very franky, a doubt, shading with you. when i was the deputy minister was also responsible for our affairs in the world trade organization. and it wilfred organization of honest on

is this is the least developing country. and so our entire grade agenda was, was, was revolving around those ecosystems that we had to develop held education of access to finance. so as a means and businesses can grow. and so many other things. now, when we talk about the stoppage or pause in the development in progress of all these ecosystem, including access to education, whether girls or boys, whether in carbon or equal to diaz, health services. any single step that we could take in a one can argue that the last many years, we had so many other problems like corruption and there was no progress to all that we ideally wanted. i agree with them. sure, we were not perfect, but we're, we're, we're a tiny steps that we were taking. we're not taking them anymore. and it's painful it all levels. yes, you know, you could see the, if you,

if you see it as milestones of commitments made between thought a barn in the, in the international community. sure. a did, but there is still a certain segment of, of young girls that cannot go to the schools. so, so if we have to do comparisons, i think again, the problem is with the west to see of harnessed on from the lenses that they have in the, in the capitals. but on the ground, you know, things are not really white and black. you know, there are so many shades in, there's so many grays that one have to consider and one has to accumulate on all the positives and leave out all the negatives. if you ask me, what's the best thing that has happened often balaban some, i would simply say just one thing in the security, i can travel to any corner of, of honest thunder fredy. but apart from that, there is absolutely nothing from anybody. the taller bon,

the international community, the previous leadership, everybody involved in the affairs of, of honest thought of whether they being neighbors or to rational community or organizations are responsible for what we are witnessing enough on it. this is not just a, something caused by one individual organization. everybody involved, including me, including the previous guffman, you know, sort of responsible for why you were not prepared for the situation like this. why there was no discussion about economics, education rights, and so many other things. when the peace negotiations were happening, when the power sharing agreement was done it out. i think it was pretty late. i later a allow you to, to take actions. i some of that, i like the way to paint afghanistan a thing, tons of gray. we got that exact response from the director, the couple institute, the piece when we asked him earlier,

how is afghanistan being government right now? this is what he told us. i think it will be slightly unfair to a judge where does holler one are able to manage the humanitarian disaster than the comic meltdown that we faced with it right now. he ran dennis on. ah, because simply, i believe that they both external factors. one is that the assets of the central bank, $9200000000.00 have been frozen. and number 2 is afghanistan. the fact to taliban regime is on the us sanctions. so therefore this has caused the situation that we're in right now. i'll leave you with a comment from the chief. this is cathy, what's the point of international humanitarian agencies? if they choose whether to help or not, the country needs help. the main focus shippy on humanity. the need right now is

life, not choosing sides. thanks for watching fancy or g she collects. i see you next time. cilla man, ali shelly printed dories of determination. enjoy a busy luck though in the kiddo janet you have you make a good listening v. i don't get a short documentary by african filmmakers from molly, wanda, and cameron, desert libraries, the young cyclist and happiness, africa direct on al jazeera, freefall precision. these athletes are experts in the art of jumping out of planes . more than 40 military parachuting teams have descended here to the desert of guitar to compete for the world championship title. the competitors are all active

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