Afghanistan needs humanitarian assistance from neighboring and regional countries so as to promote the reconstruction of the country as soon as possible, said Taliban spokesman Suhail Shaheen on Wednesday.

Shaheen said in an interview with China Media Group that the new government in Afghanistan faces three main challenges.

The first is the livelihood issues of the Afghan people, as there are between 30 to 50 million people in the country crying for food and other help, the spokesman noted.

“They are in dire need of food and assistance, and soon, the people of Afghanistan, they are living under the poverty line, so this is a challenge and a priority for us, and we need humanitarian assistance from other countries, from neighboring countries, and other world countries to provide assistance to the people of Afghanistan.

“We do not want this assistance for ourselves. We want this for our people, because our people, they have suffered a lot because of the past 20 years and this is a critical time,” he said.

Shaheen, who is the spokesman for the Taliban’ office in Qatar, also called on neighboring countries to help the Afghan people rebuild Afghanistan.

“Second is our priority to build peace in the country, and third and the most important our priority is to reconstruct Afghanistan, and that is not possible to be done properly without assistance from neighboring countries, including China and other countries to come to the help of the people of Afghanistan, to reconstruct Afghanistan, because our country is so much destroyed during the time of occupation,” he said.