According to officials, talks between the United States and the Taliban are scheduled for Thursday in Qatar to discuss releasing some of Afghanistan’s reserves in the wake of a devastating earthquake. Washington is reportedly looking for ways to ensure that the money goes to aiding the local population.
A board member of the Afghan central bank warned that it might take some time to complete the effort, despite the White House’s claims that it is moving “urgently” forward.
According to the Taliban’s foreign ministry spokesman Hafiz Zia Ahmed, Amir Khan Muttaqi, the foreign minister of the Taliban, as well as representatives from the finance ministry and the central bank, have arrived in Doha, Qatar, for discussions.
The United States is focused on a variety of concerns, including human rights and opening schools for girls, according to the State Department, which announced that its ambassador for Afghanistan, Tom West, would participate.
Such negotiations are important, according to a spokesperson for the US State Department, which does not recognise Taliban leadership over Afghanistan, in order to further US interests. The spokesperson continued, “None of these exchanges should be viewed as ‘legitimising’ the Taliban or its so-called administration, but are only a reflection of the need for such dialogues.
After the United States ended a 20-year military campaign in August 2021, the Taliban assumed control.
The international community at the time stopped providing Afghanistan’s estimated 40 million citizens with billions in direct aid, and Washington at the time froze $7 billion in reserves.
Even though some help has been reinstated, the currency has fallen and the nation is in a catastrophic economic crisis.
The urgency of the financial discussion is increased by last week’s 5.9-magnitude earthquake in eastern Afghanistan, which claimed more than 1,000 lives and left tens of thousands homeless.
According to Shah Mehrabi, a member of the Supreme Council of the Central Bank of Afghanistan, “negotiations are under process, and it is our anticipation that a final plan under consideration will be finalised.”
Details on “the method to transfer the reserves to the Central Bank has not been finalised,” he told AFP.
“It will require some time. These things don’t happen overnight.”
“Get these funds moving,”
Karine Jean-Pierre, the press secretary for the White House, stated over the weekend that actions were being taken “to get these funds moving” from the frozen reserves.
In order to make sure these money help the Afghan people and not the Taliban, we are working rapidly to answer complex problems about their use, she told reporters as she travelled to Europe with Vice President Joe Biden.
Half of the total reserves blocked by the US government, or $3.5 billion, are at issue.
In addition to teaching economics at Montgomery College in the suburbs of the US capital, Mehrabi has suggested that these reserves should be given to the central bank.
He suggested a “limited, supervised release of reserves” of approximately $150 million per month to cover imports.
In order to relieve the suffering of families dealing with excessive inflation, he claimed, this will help “stabilise prices and help meet the requirements of regular Afghans so that they can afford to buy bread, cooking oil, sugar, and fuel.”
He stated that the use of the money “may be independently monitored and examined by external auditing firms with an option to terminate in the event of misuse.”
The prospect of a food shortage has been raised by the United Nations.
Prior to the earthquake, the US said that it was directing help to organisations operating in Afghanistan and would be donating close to $55 million to the relief efforts rendered more urgent by the earthquake.
The United States continues to view the Taliban as a terrorist organisation and has stressed that any improvement in relations would be contingent upon resolving major issues, notably how women are treated.
In February, Biden gave the go-ahead for the other half of the frozen reserves to be used for compensating survivors and families of those who lost their lives in the September 11, 2001 attacks. These attacks served as the impetus for the invasion in which the United States overthrew the Taliban and maintained a pro-Western government for two decades.
