U.S. eases pressure of sanctions on Afghanistan
The Biden administration on Wednesday took steps to ease the pressure that sanctions on the Taliban are having on Afghanistan, as the combination of the pandemic, a severe drought, the loss of foreign aid and frozen currency reserves have left the country’s fragile economy on the brink of collapse.
The humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan has put the Biden administration on the defensive three months after the Taliban assumed power and U.S. and international forces left the country. A thicket of U.S. and international sanctions that were designed to cut the Taliban off from the international financial system have left the entire country with a cash shortage, crippling banks and businesses and sending prices soaring.
The United States does not recognize the Taliban as the legitimate government of Afghanistan. Following the group’s takeover of the country this year, the Biden administration froze $9.5 billion of Afghanistan’s foreign reserves, stopped sending shipments of dollars to Afghanistan’s central bank and pressured the International Monetary Fund to delay plans to transmit emergency reserve funds to the country.
The Treasury Department said Wednesday that it was issuing new “general licenses” that would make it easier for nongovernmental organizations, international aid groups and the U.S. government to provide relief to the Afghan people while maintaining economic pressure on the Taliban.
“The United States is the largest single provider of humanitarian assistance in Afghanistan. We are committed to supporting the people of Afghanistan, which is why Treasury is taking these additional steps to facilitate assistance,” Wally Adeyemo, the deputy Treasury secretary, said in a statement.
Adeyemo said the Treasury Department was providing “broad authorizations” that would allow relief to flow to the Afghan people.
The general licenses allow financial transactions involving the Taliban and members of the Haqqani network as long as the money is used for things such as projects to meet basic human needs, civil society development and environmental and natural resource protection.
The move comes after the Treasury Department this month issued a license allowing personal remittance payments to be sent to people in Afghanistan.
The Biden administration is walking a delicate line between trying to provide relief to the people of Afghanistan and keeping economic pressure on the Taliban as leverage to prevent human rights abuses and terrorist activity. Biden administration officials said that international aid groups have deep experience working with countries where sanctions are in place and that they were hopeful that the relief would reach its intended recipients.
“We’re very conscious of the fact that there is an incredibly difficult humanitarian situation right now, one that could get worse as winter sets in,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken told reporters in an end-of-year news conference Tuesday.
He called the problem “an area of intense focus” for the administration, while noting that the United States is the top provider of humanitarian aid to the country. At the same time, Blinken said, America is determined to ensure “that the Taliban make good on the expectations of the international community,” including by respecting human rights and women’s rights, not carrying out reprisals against political enemies, and preventing transnational terrorist groups from operating on Afghan soil.