Pakistan allows India to send wheat to Afghanistan

Pakistan finally allow India to send 50,000 tons of wheat through its territory to neighboring Afghanistan. Sulaiman Shah Zaheer, a spokesman of the Afghanistan Ministry of Commerce and Industries informed that Islamabad agreed to allow over land wheat shipments nearly a month after Kabul sought permission. “The issue has now been resolved, and India can now send the wheat to Afghanistan via the Wagah border in Pakistan,” he said. Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan had said that his country would “favorably consider the request by Afghan brothers for transportation of wheat offered by India through Pakistan on exceptional basis,” in a statement after a Nov. 12 meeting with Afghanistan’s Acting Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi. 

Afghanistan is reeling under a severe hunger crisis as its economy has stalled since the Taliban took over in August. The aid will be the first such consignment from New Delhi, which is yet to recognize the country’s new Taliban regime. Pakistan, Iran and UAE are among the other nations that have provided Afghanistan with food and medical supplies. More than half of the country’s nearly 40 million people are likely to face acute food shortage and nine million are already on brink of starvation, according to a recent World Food Program report.  Last month Pakistan had denied India’s request to send the wheat because of the fractious relationship between the two nations.