ICRC to prioritize Afghanistan until country finds stability after foreign troop pullout

Moscow, Jun 25 (Agency) Ksenia Shakalova – The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) plans to pay more attention to the situation in Afghanistan in the coming months after the withdrawal of foreign troops, as the country is expected to see a rather difficult transition period, ICRC President Peter Maurer said in an interview with Sputnik. Washington announced in April that all US forces would be removed from Afghanistan by September 11, with the gradual pullout starting in May. NATO is also withdrawing its troops in coordination with the United States. “Everybody expects Afghanistan to be in maybe an even more difficult transition period from now on till there is new political stability in the country, which is not yet there.

So our expectation is that Afghanistan will be one of the high priority areas for the ICRC in the months to come,” Maurer said on the sidelines of the 9th Moscow Conference on International Security (MCIS). While many international actors tried to pretend that Afghanistan was a stable country, the statistics prove the opposite. The number of civilians and military killed, and increasing social problems, show that the situation has degraded over the past several years. “I expect a difficult period of volatile situations which comes on top of a period in Afghanistan which has been difficult already in the past years,” Maurer said. This year’s edition of the MCIS ran from June 22-24 and gathered defense officials and experts from nearly 50 countries.