How the world rolls from Trump’s help freeze

In famine-hit Sudan, soup kitchens that feed hundreds of thousands of civilians caught in a war zone are shut down.

In Thailand, war refugees with life -threatening diseases have been rejected by hospitals and driven out to provisional stretcher.

In Ukraine, residents in the front line of the war with Russia can go without firewood in the middle of winter.

Some of the world’s most vulnerable populations already feel President Trump’s sudden cutting of billions of dollars in American help that help ward off hunger, treat diseases and provide shelter to the displaced.

In a few days Mr. Trump’s order to freeze almost all US foreign aid intensified humanitarian crises and raised deep questions about America’s reliability and global status.

“Everyone is fooling,” Atif Mukhtar from Emergency Response Rooms, a local volunteer group in the besieged Sudanese capital, Khartoum, said of Aid Freeze.

Shortly after advertising the Cutoffet, Trump Administration suddenly changed gear. State Secretary Marco Rubio said this week The “life -saving humanitarian assistance” could continue and offer a respite for what he called “core” efforts to provide food, medicine, shelter and other emergencies.

But he emphasized that the postponement was “temporary character” with limited exceptions. In addition, hundreds of senior officials and workers who help distribute American help already had been fired Or go on leave and many aid efforts remain paralyzed around the world.

Most of the soup kitchens in Khartoum, the beat-torn capital of Sudan, are closed. Until last week, the United States was the largest source of money for the volunteer driven kitchens that fed 816,000 people there.

“For most people, it’s the only meal they get,” said Hajooj Kuka, a spokesman for the emergency rooms describing Khartoum as a city “on the edge of hunger.”

After the US money was frozen last week, some of the aid groups that channel these funds to the food kitchens said they were uncertain whether they were allowed to continue. Others interrupted the money completely. Now 434 of the 634 volunteer kitchens in the capital are closed, Mr. Kuka.

“And more goes out of business every day,” he added.

Many of the auxiliary staff, doctors and people in distress who are dependent on American help are now expecting their relationship with the United States and the message that Trump administration sends: America is focuses on oneself.

“It feels like an easy decision from the US president is killing so many lives,” he said Nah Pha, a tuberculosis patient who said he was told to leave an American funded hospital in Mae La Refugee Camp, the largest refugee camp on the Thai Myanmar border.

Mr. Nah Pha, who fled Myanmar in 2007 to escape the matches there, said the staff gave him a week’s delivery of medicine and told him that was all they could give. “When my medicine runs out, I have no other place to get it,” he added.

The public health consequences of Aid Freeze are broad, says health workers. In Cambodia, who had been at the forefront of eradicating malaria with the help of the United States, officials are now concerning that a stop in the funding will put them back. In Nepal, a $ 72 million program to reduce malnutrition is suspended. In South Africa and Haiti, officials and auxiliary workers concern that hundreds of thousands of people could die if Trump administration draws support for a signature American program to combat HIV and AIDS.

Some programs that do not fit the category of life -saving help remain frozen, while others are explicitly blocked because they fall outside the ideological boundaries of the administration, including any help with abortions, gender or diversity problems. (Although Mr. Rubio specifically blocked assistance with abortions, federal law had already done so.)

The United Nations Population Fund, the UN Sexual and Reproductive Health Agency, said that due to financing freezing, mothers and mental health services to millions of women in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Gaza, Ukraine, And other places had been disturbed or eliminated. In Afghanistan, where the Taliban has banned women to work, 1,700 Afghan women who worked for the agency would no longer be employed.

At stake is not only the good will that the United States have built up internationally, but also its work to promote America’s security interests. In the Ivory Coast, an American-sponsored program that collects sensitive intelligence on Al Qaeda-related events has been interrupted.

In the Democratic Republic Congo, some of the funding for the United Nations Agencies, supporting more than 4.5 million people displaced by a rapidly growing conflict in the country of the country, frozen, according to a US humanitarian official on the continent.

Even with Mr. Rubio’s announcements that life-saving efforts could be resumed remained much of the US aid system in Africa paralyzed by confusion and disturbance, including in conflict hit areas where every day counts.

“When they issue these wide orders, they don’t seem to understand what they are going out exactly,” said Jeremy Konngæk, a former senior USAID -Officer under the Biden administration, now president of Refugees International. “They pull handles without knowing what’s at the other end.”

Some of the approx. $ 70 billion in annual foreign aid approved by Congress has been aimed at supporting civil society in countries with authoritarian regimes, especially in places where the United States sees democratic gains such as promoting US security or diplomatic interests.

In Iran, where the work of documenting detention, executions and women’s rights violations is carried out by units funded by the United States, activists say the US withdrawal now means there will be few units that hold the Iranian government responsible.

A Persian-linguistic media offering financed by the US government said their employees worked on a voluntary basis to keep the site going for now, but they had fired all their freelancers. Without money they said they couldn’t continue.

“While Trump was fighting for a promise of maximum pressure on the Iranian government, his decision to cut back on funding for dozens of USA supported pro-democracy and human rights initiatives are making maximum pressure on the regime’s opponents,” said Omid Memaristy, An expert on Iran’s human rights question at Dawn, a Washington-based group focused on US foreign policy.

In Cambodia, Pa Tongchen, 25, was dependent on American funding for journalism in a country where almost all independent media has been crushed. He was scheduled to start working on February 3 as staff reporter by a media offering run by a nonprofit created with US support.

Mr. Pa said he had hoped to shine a light over corruption through his work. “I want to help people who are vulnerable in our community,” he said. “They are ignored if no journalists report on them.”

In Egypt, where the United States finance scholarships for more than 1,000 bachelor students at private and public universities, students were left in Limbo.

“I was in real shock, and I didn’t know what to do, especially when they asked us to leave the dormitory immediately,” said Ahmed Mahmoud, 18, a student who was starting classes next semester on it American university, but instead had to throw all his belongings into five boxes.

The fall from Aid Freeze is likely to reverberate geopolitically, giving American rivals, like China, a window of opportunities to present themselves as a reliable partner.

“It will separate China from the United States to win the hearts and minds of many of the global southern countries,” said Jingdong Yuan, director of Stockholm International Peace Research Institute’s China and Asia Security Program.

In Africa, America’s well -run auxiliary machines were one of the factors that differentiated the United States from China and Russia. While Moscow exposes mercenaries and Beijing mines to rare minerals, Washington has reached all over the continent with aid programs that are valuable billions of dollars that not only save lives but also give a strong form of diplomatic soft power.

Now much of it is in doubt. In Africa’s war zones, some are already regrettable about their dependence on American help.

“It was our fault to rely so strongly on a donor,” Mr. ATIF from the emergency rooms in Sudan. “But this has really shocked us. You can’t take food of people starving. It’s just crazy. “

On the border with Thailand and Myanmar were the consequences of Mr. Trump’s decision sharp. There has a four-year civil war and decades of battles between Myanmar’s military junta and ethnic armies pushed thousands of refugees into Thailand.

So Tha Ker, the camp leader for Mae La Camp, said he was told Friday by the International Rescue Committee, a group that receives us funding that it would stop supporting medical treatment, water and waste management for all the seven refugees Hospitals administered by his camp.

“The first thought that came to me was that the one who made this decision has no compassion at all,” Mr. Tha ker.

Mr. Tha Ker said he and his staff had to tell 60 patients in a hospital that they had to go home. Videos broadcast on social media showed men who carry patients on provisional stretcher through non -aspined streets.

“We explained to them that the hospital itself is like a person struggling to breathe through someone else’s nose,” he added. “Now that the support has stopped, it feels like we’re just waiting for the end.”

Reporting was contributed Mujib Mashal In New Delhi, Pamodi Waravita In Colombo, Bhadra Sharma from Kathmandu, Elian Peltier In Dakar, Vivian Yee and Rania Khaled In Cairo, Daniel Police In Buenos Aires, David C. Adams In Florida, Leily Nikounazar In Brussels and Sun Narin In Phnom Penh.