EDITORIAL: Two weeks after an American drone killed al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri in Kabul and as the Taliban marked the first anniversary of taking over Afghanistan, Washington said it no longer believes that the Taliban are capable of implementing the pledges they made in Doha in signing a peace agreement.
Its distrust of the Taliban is perfectly understandable, but not linking the same with the release of Afghanistan’s frozen sovereign funds deposited with the Federal Reserve Bank in New York by the Afghan central bank. President Joe Biden has already announced his blatantly unfair decision to split a total of $ 7 billion of Afghan money in half, with a $3.5 billion going into meeting the needs of the Afghan people and setting aside the rest for relatives of the 9/11 victims. If commandeering another people’s foreign currency reserves was not bad enough, the US is now refusing to return them even half of the money they own.
The Biden administration wants to make the money inaccessible to the Taliban, in addition to employing other pressure tactics such as sanctions, travel bans and the promise of potential diplomatic recognition, hoping they would break ties with terrorist groups. That though is no reason to punish the people for something they have no control over. The country’s economy is in dire straits, causing mass starvation as an estimated half of the population faces acute hunger.
Earlier this year, the US announced that it would dispatch $ 80 million to the UN Food Agriculture Organisation for combating hunger in Afghanistan, $40 million to UNICEF to support education of Afghan children, in particular girls, and another $ 30 million to UN Women to provide protection services to women and girls.
But as President of the International Rescue Committee and former British Foreign Secretary David Miliband correctly pointed out in a written statement to the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Near East, South and Central Asia last February, “aid cannot make up for an economy deprived of oxygen”, adding that “the humanitarian community did not choose the government”. There is middle course, he said, to help the Afghan people without embracing the Taliban government. There surely are other ways to work around that government.
It is good to note that the US is also beginning to realise the futility of its policy towards this war-devastated country. At a recent news briefing, State Department spokesman Ned Price said the administration is searching for alternative ways to use the money to help Afghans at a time when millions are afflicted by a growing hunger crisis. Although he did not offer any details, according to media reports, American officials are now working with Islamic organisations and nations, including Qatar and the UAE, to provide relief to the Afghan people. The focus of this effort should also be rehabilitation and revival of the Afghan economy.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2022
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