Washington Post: US discusses freezing part of Afghanistan’s reserves to aid country

MOSCOW, June 28 – RIA Novosti. US officials are working with the Taliban leadership (the Taliban is under UN sanctions for terrorist activities) on a mechanism that would allow the Afghan government to use the central bank reserves frozen in the US to prevent a serious shortage in the country. author The Washington Post cited knowledgeable sources.

The newspaper states that the “disaster” in Afghanistan was partly due to the US authorities freezing the country’s billions of dollars in reserves.

Now, according to the publication, US officials have begun negotiations to grant the Afghan government at least partial access to frozen assets held by US agencies. It is noted that US officials, during negotiations with the Taliban, are trying to establish a system in which bank employees can dispose of their assets in a way that will stabilize the Afghan economy and ensure that it is not abused by the Taliban. One option is to involve a third-party trust fund to manage the money.

In February, US President Joe Biden signed an executive order blocking $7 billion of Afghan central bank assets held in US banks. After the court decision, it was assumed that half of these funds would be used to meet the humanitarian needs of the Afghan people in the future. The remaining 3.5 billion will remain in the United States and will be used to pay compensation to the families of victims of terrorist attacks, including the September 11, 2001 attacks.

The Afghan economy faced a severe crisis as the country’s international assets were frozen and support from abroad was withdrawn after the Taliban came to power. Many Afghans, including civil servants, UN and World Bank employees, education and health workers, have not been paid for months. Hundreds of doctors and employees of state energy companies protested salary delays in Kabul. And about. Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaki said delays in payments affected nearly half a million civil servants.

In early August, the Taliban stepped up their offensive against Afghan government forces, entered Kabul on August 15 and declared the war over the next day. In the last two weeks of August, Western citizens and Afghans collaborating with them were evacuated en masse from the US military-protected Kabul airport. On the night of August 31, the US military left the Kabul airport, ending nearly 20 years of US military presence in Afghanistan. In early September, the composition of the interim Afghan government headed by Mohammad Hassan Ahund, who was head of the Foreign Ministry during the Taliban’s * first rule and has been under UN sanctions since 2001, was announced.

*The movement is under UN sanctions for terrorist activities.