Afghanistan is in dire straits. Everybody, from President Joe Biden to U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, knows it. The statistics are grim, if not downright apocalyptic.
The World Food Program projects that nearly 23 million people, or half of Afghanistan’s entire population, will be food insecure this year. Over 8 million people are at risk of famine, and a million children could perish due to malnutrition and starvation. The Afghan banking system, propped up by foreign donations for the previous two decades, is on its last legs. Those lucky enough to have savings in the bank can only withdraw a certain amount, lest financial institutions in the country run out of cash completely. U.N. officials have consistently stressed that Afghanistan needs a major cash infusion to afford basic imports, keep the hospital system up and running, and pay public sector employees who have been working for free since the Taliban took over last August.
The Biden administration recognizes it has a problem.
Indeed, Afghanistan’s current situation reflects the end result of 20 years of failed U.S. policy. This included pouring unsustainable amounts of taxpayer dollars into a country teeming with corrupt bureaucrats and incompetent leaders. It turns out that financing 75% of Afghanistan’s budget for years on end, only to cut off the tap immediately, isn’t the best way to build a self-sufficient economy.
U.S. sanctions on the Taliban, the de-facto government in Afghanistan, are hindering the flow of commerce, deterring banks from touching anything related to Afghanistan, and complicating the type of humanitarian work desperately needed. No financial institution, organization, or company wants to risk a hefty fine from the U.S. Treasury Department, even if humanitarian activities are technically permitted.
As a consequence, the U.S. and its partners have settled on a series of patchwork responses to make the Afghan people’s lives a little more tolerable, Washington has sought to clarify what the U.S. sanctions regime on the Taliban does and doesn’t allow; on Feb. 2, the administration issued updated guidance in order to assure financial institutions that payments related to a broad category of humanitarian assistance are permitted. The U.S. granted another $308 million in humanitarian aid last month. And on Friday, Biden signed an executive order that transfers $7 billion in Afghan foreign reserves to a special account at the New York Federal Reserve. Half of that money is to be made available for the benefit of the Afghan people. The other half will be held back and potentially made available to 9/11 families seeking a monetary judgment for al Qaeda’s terrorist attacks.
Keeping half of Afghanistan’s reserves locked in a U.S. bank account, however, essentially deprives the Afghan people of their own money at a time when the country’s economy is imploding, their currency is depreciating, and their doctors are working for months on end without pay. The Afghan people are in effect being punished for morbid sins they had nothing to do with. The decision reeks of the classical Washington, D.C., game of splitting the difference on a tough policy question in order to deftly navigate between competing constituencies. If that was the attempt, it backfired almost immediately. “I still can’t figure out the motive here,” Dartmouth University Professor Jason Lyall tweeted. “It just seems wantonly cruel. It punishes the Afghan people without challenging Taliban rule.”
Lyall has a point. The Taliban aren’t going anywhere. The group is morally contemptible. Indeed, it continues to hold American citizens. The problem is this anger toward the Taliban (anger that is justified, by the way) does nothing whatsoever to help the tens of millions of ordinary Afghans they claim to care for. In the world of international relations, reality often outweighs emotion. And here’s the reality: the Taliban have the guns, hold a monopoly on violence in Afghanistan, control the ministries, and have demonstrated an ability to quash enemies with brute force.
This decision on Afghanistan’s foreign reserves is a reflection of Washington still searching for the perfect policy — one that will please everyone, everywhere, all of the time. If this isn’t a futile endeavor, what is?
Daniel DePetris (@DanDePetris) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. His opinions are his own.
