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With Afghanistan facing a severe humanitarian crisis, the Taliban regime is making a big mistake by alienating India, which has for over two decades been assisting the country's progress including humanitarian, civil aviation, telecommunication, transport and education sectors, according to a media report.
According to Asian Lite newspaper, India has supplied military hardware, four Mi-25 attack helicopters to the Afghan Air Force in 2015 and 285 military vehicles to the Afghan National Army. In January 2009, the country has provided 250,000 metric tonnes of wheat to help Afghanistan tide over its current food crisis and reconstructed Indira Gandhi Institute of Child Health in Kabul as part of it's humanitarian assistance, the newspaper said. Apart from it, India gave three airbus aircrafts, along with essential spares, and retrained airline officials to develop capacity in the civilian aviation sector of Afghanistan. It undertook the emergency restoration of telecommunication infrastructure in 11 provinces in 2005 with the installation of equipment including digital telephone exchanges, with infrastructure facilities including towers and power supply systems, Asian Lite reported. In late 2001, India has provided 400 buses to Afghanistan, of which 205 were deployed in Kabul and the balance in 25 provinces of Afghanistan after decade of devastation and faced with the pressure of returning refugees, Kabul and the provinces found themselves bereft of public transport facilities, it added. In the education sector, India has helped in the reconstruction of Habibia School, Kabul and 500 annual long term university scholarships provided by India to Afghanistan, Asian Lite. Spokesperson of UN Human Rights Council Babar Baloch said on Friday that around 23 million people, or 55 per cent of the population, are facing extreme levels of hunger - nearly nine million of whom are at risk of famine. UNHCR has assisted some 700,000 displaced people across the country in 2021, the majority since mid-August. Every week, the agency is helping nearly 60,000 people, according to the statement. (ANI)
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