US Lawmakers Urge Biden to Unlock Afghan Central Bank Reserves

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Joe Biden

Ayaz Gul
VOA News
December 21, 2021

ISLAMABAD — A group of 46 mostly Democratic lawmakers Monday wrote a letter to U.S. President Joe Biden, pressing him to “conscientiously but urgently” take steps to help avert a looming humanitarian disaster in Afghanistan.

The lawmakers asked Biden to quickly ease ongoing punitive sanctions and unblock the Afghan central bank’s foreign reserves, which Washington withheld immediately after the Taliban militarily seized control of the country from the U.S.-backed government in mid-August.

“We are also deeply concerned that sanctions against Taliban officials now in charge of governmental functions are creating a chilling effect for financial institutions and aid organizations serving Afghanistan,” the letter read.

The White House responded later in the day that its hands are tied regarding frozen funds but that the United States continues to support humanitarian efforts in Afghanistan.

The sanctions and abrupt suspension of international assistance have left the Afghan economy, which heavily depended on external aid over the past 20 years, on the brink of collapse.

The crisis has increased humanitarian needs, stemming from years of war, drought and extreme poverty in Afghanistan. The United Nations estimates more than half of the nearly 40 million population face starvation, with 1 million children at risk of dying of “sever acute malnutrition.”

“The U.S. confiscation of $9.4 billion in Afghanistan’s currency reserves held in the United States is contributing to soaring inflation and the shuttering of commercial banks and vital private businesses, plunging the country…deeper into economic and humanitarian crisis,” the lawmakers wrote.

They argued “punitive economic policies” will not weaken Taliban leaders but will rather hurt innocent Afghans who have already suffered decades of war and poverty. “We fear, as aid groups do, that maintaining this policy could cause more civilian deaths in the coming year than were lost in 20 years of war.”

The Afghan economic “pain and humanitarian collapse” both threaten to trigger a new refugee crisis throughout the region, the letter warned.

Aid agencies working in Afghanistan are calling for scaling up relief efforts, but they say the financial sanctions are hampering their operations.

Congressional Republicans say the U.S. must not allow the Taliban to access any amount of funding, the Washington Post reported.

The United States has not recognized the Taliban government nor has the rest of the world.

The Biden administration is pressing the Islamist group to cut ties with terrorist groups, including al-Qaida, end reprisals against Afghans affiliated with the deposed government, rule Afghanistan inclusively, uphold human rights, and allow women to fully participate in public life and girls to seek an education.

The letter deplored the Taliban government’s grave human rights abuses, crackdowns on civil society and repression of women.

“However, pragmatic U.S. engagement with the de facto authorities is nevertheless key to averting unprecedented harm to tens of millions of women, children and innocent civilians,” it added.

“Ongoing engagement with the Taliban to coordinate access to urgently needed hard currency can provide the necessary leverage to secure human rights improvements,” argued the letter from U.S. lawmakers.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki, responding to a VOA question about the letter, told reporters that the status of the Afghan reserves was the subject of an ongoing litigation brought by victims of the September 11, 2001, attacks and other terrorist attacks “who hold judgments against the Taliban.”

Psaki stressed the legal proceedings cannot be disregarded and the administration continues to face difficult questions like how the funds can be made available to directly benefit the people of Afghanistan while ensuring the Taliban do not benefit from them.

“The Taliban remain sanctioned by the United States as a specially designated global terrorist group. That certainly has not changed, but this is, of course, complicated by the ongoing litigation over those funds,” she argued.

Washington has pledged hundreds of millions of dollars in humanitarian aid to Afghanistan this year and vowed to work with international partners to facilitate the delivery of relief assistance to Afghans.

The U.S. Treasury decided earlier this month to allow personal and non-personal remittances to be made to Afghans while donors agreed to transfer $280 million from the World Bank-administered Afghanistan Reconstruction Trust Fund.

However, the U.N.-led relief community says the scale of the rapidly deteriorating Afghan humanitarian emergency requires much more than what is currently being done.

“Afghanistan’s economy is now in free fall, and that if we do not act decisively and with compassion, I fear that this fall will pull down the entire population with it,” U.N. humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths warned on Sunday.

Griffiths told an Afghanistan conference of Islamic countries in neighboring Pakistan that Afghan health facilities are overflowing with malnourished children, some 70% of teachers are not being paid, and millions of Afghan children are out of school, noting that prices of key commodities continue to rise.

Anita Powell contributed to this report.

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New Survey Shows Afghan Media ‘Carnage’ After Taliban Takeover

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Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
December 20, 2021

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) says the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan in August has had a “dramatic” impact on the country’s media, with more than four out of every 10 media outlets having disappeared and 60 percent of journalists and other media workers no longer being able to work.

According to a survey by RSF and the Afghanistan Independent Journalists Association (AIJA), the media landscape is now “largely devoid of women journalists” after 84 percent of female media employees lost their jobs, the Paris-based media-freedom watchdog said on December 20.

“There is an urgent need to rein in the spiral leading inevitably to the disappearance of Afghan media and to ensure that respect for press freedom is a priority,” said Reza Moini, the head of RSF’s Iran-Afghanistan desk.

“Journalists’ safety, the fate of women journalists, media legislation and the right of access to news and information are all crucial issues that the authorities must address without delay,” Moini added.

RSF said that of the 543 media outlets tallied in Afghanistan at the start of the summer only 312 were still operating at the end of November, meaning that 43 percent of media outlets in the country had disappeared within three months.

While most Afghan provinces had at least 10 privately owned media outlets, some regions now have “almost no local media at all,” it said.

This “carnage” has had a major impact on employment in the media sector, according to RSF.

Of the 10,790 people working in the Afghan media at the beginning of August, only 4,360 were still working when the survey was carried out, it said.

Proportionally, female media workers have been hit harder: More than four out of five women have lost their jobs, against one out of every two men.

And “no female journalist at all is still working” in 15 of the country’s 34 provinces, according to RSF.

Hundreds of journalists have left Afghanistan over the past four months fearing reprisals or because of the impossibility of continuing to practice their profession.

Afghan media must comply with “11 Journalism Rules” issued by the Taliban-installed government that have opened the way to “censorship and persecution” and deprived journalists of their independence, RSF said.

In addition to harassment by the Taliban, media outlets been badly hit by a loss of advertising revenue and a halt in national and international funding.

Copyright (c) 2021. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave NW, Ste 400, Washington DC 20036.

Afghan music students escaped the Taliban and are beginning their new lives abroad

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NPR: After the Taliban took over Afghanistan, members of the institute feared for their lives. After five airlifts starting Oct. 2, nearly 300 students, faculty and family members affiliated with the music school all made it safely to Doha by mid-November. Click here to read more (external link).

We Can Manage Five Airports of Afghanistan, Says Turkish Foreign Minister

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8am: The foreign minister of Turkey Mevlut Cavusoglu says that it is possible that the country will jointly manage five airports in Afghanistan in cooperation with Qatar after the Doha and Kabul talks. Click here to read more (external link).

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Muttaqi Downplays Pakistan PM Khan’s Remarks

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Muttaqi

Tolo News: Acting Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi said at a press conference in Kabul on Monday that he believes remarks made by the Pakistani prime minister at the Organization of Islamic Countries (OIC) summit in Islamabad were not an insult to Afghanistan. He also said Khan’s remarks were critical of the former governments, which may have therefore caused former government officials to feel compelled to show a reaction.  On Sunday, Khan, at the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) meeting on Afghanistan, said Daesh threatens Pakistan from Afghanistan and so stability in Afghanistan is necessary. “We have had attacks from (the) Afghan border, from ISIL, into Pakistan,” he said. Click here to read more (external link).

Hundreds Line Up For Passports In Kabul In Subzero Temperatures

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Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
December 19, 2021

Hundreds of Afghans have braved freezing temperatures to stand in line outside the newly reopened passport office in Kabul, hoping to receive travel documents that would enable them to leave the war-ravaged country following the Taliban takeover in August.

The crowd started to gather late on December 18, according to media reports, after an official from the passport department of the Taliban’s Interior Ministry told reporters that Kabul’s passport office would begin issuing documents again the next day.

The issuance of passports is seen by the international community as a test of the Taliban’s commitment to its pledges to allow people to leave the country amid a worsening economic and humanitarian crisis.

The Taliban initially stopped issuing passports shortly after its return to power. The passport office in Kabul was briefly opened in October, but it was shut down again days later after biometric equipment broke down.

The United States and its allies evacuated tens of thousands of foreigners and at-risk Afghans ahead the chaotic end of the U.S.-led military presence in Afghanistan in late August following two decades of war.

But thousands more people want to leave the country, with those who worked closely with Western militaries seen to be in particular danger from Taliban retaliation.

A U.S. State Department official recently told The Wall Street Journal that at least 62,000 Afghans seeking asylum in the United States remain in Afghanistan, and that 33,000 had been vetted and approved for evacuation.

Based on reporting by AFP and Reuters

Copyright (c) 2021. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave NW, Ste 400, Washington DC 20036.

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Former Afghan security official: ‘There was no trust’ in the US when leaders fled

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Hamdullah Mohib

The Hill: Mohib blamed the decision to not involve the Afghan government in talks with the Taliban for its ultimate collapse. According to the former official, the biggest mistake was not understanding that the U.S. was withdrawing from Afghanistan, regardless of the situation. Click here to read more (external link).

Muslim World Seeks Coordinated Relief Aid to Afghanistan

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Ayaz Gul
VOA News
December 19, 2021

ISLAMABAD — Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban assured a special meeting of the 57-nation Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) Sunday that they will do more to enhance national political inclusivity and promote human rights, including those of women, in the country.

Taliban Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi spoke in Pakistan at the day-long OIC-convened huddle, which included delegates from the United States, China, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations.

It was the biggest international gathering on helping Afghanistan to prevent a humanitarian catastrophe since the Taliban seized power from the Western-backed government in August following a U.S.-led foreign troop exit from the country after 20 years.

“We stand ready, as a member of a single family, to listen to and accept all requests, concerns and advice of Islamic countries in relation to Afghanistan that can lead towards a proper and just roadmap and direct us out of the current crisis,” Muttaqi said.
“We consider human rights, women’s rights and participation by all capable Afghans from various regions our duty. We have done much in this regard and will continue to take further steps,” he added.

The chief Taliban diplomat renewed his government’s counterterrorism assurances, saying no one would be allowed to use Afghan soil against any country.

Washington and Western allies have blocked the Taliban’s access to some $9.5 billion in Afghan assets, mostly held in the U.S. Federal Reserve, imposed financial sanctions and halted non-humanitarian assistance to the war-ravaged country’s largely foreign aid-dependent economy.

Muttaqi again demanded the unfreezing of assets and removal of sanctions, saying they “have led to health, education and social services teetering on the brink; all of this has only harmed the general public.”

The U.S. and other countries have cited concerns about terrorism and waning human rights, especially those of women, for refusing to directly engage with the Taliban. Those concerns stem partly from the previous Taliban regime from 1996 to 2001, when girls were prevented from receiving an education, and women from leaving home unless accompanied by a close male relative.

Taliban leaders repeatedly have promised their new administration will not bring back the harsh policies of their previous rule. But most Afghan girls across the country are still not allowed to return to school and most female government employees have been barred from resuming their professional duties.

The Islamist group has not yet inducted a single woman in the Cabinet since announcing its government in September.

Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan, while inaugurating the OIC summit, warned that the humanitarian disaster unfolding in Afghanistan could turn into “the biggest man-made crisis” unless the world urgently takes remedial steps. He called for the U.S. to unconditionally end sanctions on Kabul and unfreeze the assets in favor of facilitating humanitarian assistance to Afghans.

“I speak to the United States specifically; they must delink the Taliban government from the 40 million Afghan citizens even if they have been in conflict with the Taliban for 20 years,” the Pakistani leader said. “But this is a question of the people of Afghanistan, 40 million human beings.”

“Unless action is taken immediately, Afghanistan is heading for chaos…But chaos suits no one. It certainly does not suit the United States,” Khan said. He added that chaos would benefit transnational terrorists linked to Islamic State and would mean more refugees heading toward Pakistan, which already hosts 3 million Afghan refugees.

The frozen assets and abrupt suspension of aid are said to have exacerbated Afghan economic upheavals and increased humanitarian needs in the country where U.N. officials say 23 million people are already facing hunger due to years of war, a severe drought and high levels of poverty.

The U.S. special representative for Afghanistan, Thomas West, who attended the summit, described it as a “timely and important initiative” in a tweet after landing in Islamabad on Saturday.

“While we continue clear-eyed diplomacy with the Taliban – on human rights, terrorism, and educational access, among many other issues – the Afghan people will remain at the center of our considerations,” West wrote.

The sanctions and the lack of diplomatic recognition of the Taliban government in Kabul have disrupted the Afghan banking system, undermining delivery of urgently needed humanitarian aid to those who urgently need it. Diplomats acknowledge facing the delicate task of channeling aid to the crisis-hit Afghan economy without also propping up the hardline Islamists.

U.N. humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths reiterated those concerns while addressing Sunday’s conference in Pakistan.

“Afghanistan’s economy is now in free fall, and that if we do not act decisively and with compassion, I fear that this fall will pull down the entire population with it,” Griffiths warned.

Griffiths said health facilities are overflowing with malnourished children, some 70 percent of teachers are not getting paid and millions of Afghan children are out of school, noting that prices of key commodities continue to rise.

The cost of wheat and fuel are up by around 40 percent and food now accounts for more than 80 percent of the average household expenditure.

Griffiths underscored the importance of “continued constructive engagement” with the Taliban government “in a process of meaningful dialogue to clarify what we expect of each other.”

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