India will send aid, especially medicine, to Afghanistan on Saturday morning. Assistance will be provided by a Kam flight that arrives on Friday and will carry 10 Indians and 94 Afghans including members of the small Afghan Hindu-Sikh community.
The Kam special flight was organized by India under Operation Devi Shakti which was launched in August to evacuate the country. Friday’s release included 9 children including 3 infants. Aid will be the first to provide this way in the country since the Taliban took over in August.
Remember, India is committed to providing 50,000 MT of wheat, essential life-saving medicines and COVID-19 vaccines to the Afghan people as humanitarian aid.
With aid to be transferred to Pakistan, routes are still being negotiated between New Delhi and Islamabad. Pakistan has announced that it will allow Indian support to extend to Afghanistan in its territory.
The human condition in this country is very bad especially as winter begins
A total of 565 homeless people were evacuated under “Operation Devi Shakti” ahead of Friday’s operation. A total of 74 members of several communities from Afghanistan, mainly Afghan Sikhs, have been evacuated by a special Indian Air Force / Air India aircraft organized by the Indian Government under Operation Devi Shakti.
After taking over the August Taliban, the foreign minister had established a 24 x 7 Special Afghanistan Cell to facilitate repatriation and other applications from Afghanistan. In August alone, Special Afghanistan Cell responded to 3,436 calls, 9,581 Whatsapp messages and 4,569 emails.
India-Afghanistan development partnerships include more than 500 projects spread across each of the country’s 34 key areas in energy areas, water supply, road connectivity, health care, education, agriculture and capacity building. In total New Delhi has invested more than USD 3 billion in the country over the past two decades.