Following the intricacies of the Afghan policy of the United States is a challenge. After a chaotic departure from the country at the end of August 2021, letting back the Taliban whom they had ousted from power twenty years earlier, they had promised a hard line against the mullahs’ regime. They thus froze, on February 11, 7 billion dollars (same amount in euros) of assets of the Afghan central bank, which were on their soil. Their armed drones killed, on July 31, Ayman Al-Zawahiri, leader of Al-Qaeda, in the heart of Kabul. Finally, Washington felt that any support, other than emergency humanitarian aid, would be the beginning of political recognition in favor of an Islamist government banished from nations.
Wednesday, September 14, the US administration, through the voice of the Department of State and that of the Treasury, decided to soften its policy with regard to the new masters of the country. She announced the creation of the Afghan Fund, based in Geneva, Switzerland, intended to receive half of the assets of the central bank of Afghanistan blocked in the United States, ie 3.5 billion dollars.
This structure will assume the functions of central bank bis. Its board of directors will be made up of two Afghan economists appointed by Washington, Anwar Ahady, former minister of trade and industry and former director of the Afghan central bank, and Shah Mehrabi, professor of economics at Montgomery College (Maryland). and former board member of the central bank. They will be accompanied by a representative of the American government and a Swiss counterpart.
The Afghan Fund will have an account with the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) and will fund Afghan banks’ access to the Swift international payment system. The Taliban government will not have access to this fund. The BRI has, since Wednesday, declared that its role is “limit[ait] the provision of banking services and the execution of the instructions of the board of directors of the fund without involvement in governance or decision-making [de celui-ci] ».
The BRI’s caution echoes a very political decision. For Assistant Secretary of State Wendy Sherman, ” [avec ce fonds,] The United States and our partners are taking an important and concrete step forward by ensuring that additional resources can be mobilized to reduce the suffering and improve the economic stability of the Afghan people, while continuing to hold the Taliban to account.”.
France maintains a hard line
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