The United Nations is proposing to pay nearly $6 million for protection of the word body’s offices and employees to Taliban-run Interior Ministry, a media report said.
The proposed funds would be paid next year mostly to subsidize the monthly wages of Taliban fighters guarding UN facilities and to provide them a monthly food allowance under an expansion of an accord with the former US-backed Afghan government, the document shows.
The proposed funds would bolster the cash-strapped Taliban’s ability to protect some 3,500 UN personnel in Kabul and 10 field offices.
The UN document said most of a proposed $4 million security budget for 2022 shared by the 20 UN agencies operating in Afghanistan “constitutes payments in respect of supplementing host nation resources for their primary responsibility to protect UN personnel.”
UNAMA would spend an additional nearly $2 million “for similar services” outside the security budget shared with other UN agencies, the document added.
The report was shared with the government spokesmen but they are yet to comment on it.
