In a statement, the Finance Ministry said a new supervisory body would deploy $3.5 billion from Afghanistan’s central bank’s reserves to help stabilize the country’s battered economy. The fund – which will be run in part by Swiss officials and Afghan economic experts – can be used to help the country pay for critical imports such as electricity and will not be accessible to Taliban officials, according to the ministry. After the crash: The wrong plane left Afghanistan The announcement follows more than a year of controversy over whether the Biden administration should return $7 billion in Afghan assets made inaccessible to the country’s leaders after the Taliban took power in August 2021. Economists say the Freezing those funds triggered the collapse of Afghanistan’s economy and hunger crisis, but the Biden administration and other analysts said the Taliban could not be trusted to handle such significant sums of money. Biden officials also announced in February that half of the $7 billion in funds would be set aside separately for lawsuits filed by victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Afghanistan’s deteriorating economy has put pressure on US officials to explore how to return funds to the country’s central bank. In June, US officials met with Taliban leaders in Doha, Qatar, to discuss possible compromises that would allow Afghanistan’s central bank technocrats to use the funds under close supervision to ensure the money does not fall into Taliban hands. . The Taliban rejected these proposals. With a deal elusive, economists and aid agencies are increasingly worried about Afghanistan’s economy amid a flight of capital and people. The United Nations estimated in August that about 4 million children are malnourished and nearly 95 percent of the country does not have enough to eat. Some economists say the new fund is insufficient to meet the country’s needs, given that central bank reserves are critical to propping up a weakened currency. A severe drought and a devastating hurricane also combined to make what some experts call the world’s worst humanitarian disaster. “This move cannot compensate for the damage to the Afghan economy and the millions of people who are starving, in large part due to the US seizure of Afghanistan’s central bank reserves,” said Mark Weisbrot, co-director of the Center for Finance. and Policy Research, a liberal think tank. The Taliban are staging a show of force to mark the anniversary of the US withdrawal However, the United States is leaving open the possibility that Afghanistan may eventually claim the bank assets in full. Deputy Finance Minister Wally Adeyemo wrote to Afghanistan’s central bank on Tuesday saying it must meet three conditions — demonstrate political independence from the Taliban, implement anti-money laundering guidelines and add a “third supervisor’ — before The United States could consider returning the funds. “Financial management deficiencies are contributing to the economic and humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan,” Adeyemo wrote in the letter. He added, “there is currently no institution in Afghanistan that can guarantee that these funds will be used only for the benefit of the people of Afghanistan.”
