Stop Starving Afghanistan

The question that U.S. policymakers should ask themselves is whether or not they want the U.S. to be the author of a man-made famine.

Ali A. Olomi calls attention to the damage being done by U.S. sanctions and asset freezes in Afghanistan:

Despite militarily withdrawing, the United States continues to pursue a policy of financially starving Afghanistan of desperately needed funds in an attempt to force the Taliban to reduce its repression — especially of women — as well as its support for terrorism.

This approach resurrects the American policy toward the Taliban between the late 1990s and the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in late 2001 — and early signs indicate it will have the same consequences now as it did then. Starving the regime of funding won’t improve its behavior. Instead, it will only lead to prolonged suffering for Afghans.

Last month, dozens of economists implored the Biden administration to free up the frozen assets so that the Afghan economy can begin to function at least somewhat normally. As they said in the letter, “These reserves were critical to the functioning of the Afghan economy, in particular, to manage money supply, to stabilize the currency and to pay for the imports -- chiefly food and oil -- on which Afghanistan relies.” Thus far, the administration’s response has been to keep the money that by all rights belongs to the people of Afghanistan.

The official line from the State Department is that the U.S. is “looking at mechanisms that could be put in place to see to it that these $3.5 billion in preserved assets make their way efficiently and effectively to the people of Afghanistan,” but this amounts to stealing another country’s money while claiming to be its responsible steward. While the U.S. looks to deliver these assets “efficiently and effectively,” ordinary Afghans are going hungry and dying. There may be legitimate concerns about some of these funds being misused and diverted, but that is not a good enough reason to deprive an entire country of its financial lifeblood.

The U.S. has no right to keep this money, and it is doing so simply because it can. As Olomi says, this will do nothing to change the behavior of the Taliban for the better, but we know that it is already having severe consequences for tens of millions of people in Afghanistan. That will only get worse with time. After waging a war in their country for twenty years, the absolute least that the U.S. could do now is to stop causing any more harm, but even this much seems to be beyond our government.

The question that U.S. policymakers should ask themselves is whether or not they want the U.S. to be the author of a man-made famine that could claim hundreds of thousands and possibly millions of lives. Releasing Afghanistan’s frozen assets and providing sanctions relief are not cure-alls. Conditions in Afghanistan will still be poor even after these changes are made. Even so, we are talking about the difference between a nightmarish humanitarian crisis and one that is bad but much more manageable. No doubt the “optics” of releasing money to a government controlled by the Taliban are bad, but it looks far worse to withhold money that could have helped save countless innocent lives for fear of seeming “weak.”

There is a common assumption in Washington that starving an unfriendly government of resources is justifiable because it supposedly weakens them, but we know from many cases in different parts of the world that throttling an entire country has little effect on the behavior of the targeted government. It is always ordinary people that get it in the neck, and as these policies hurt and weaken the people the government will tighten its grip and deflect blame for bad conditions to the outsiders that are trying to starve them into submission. The government becomes stronger internally as its domestic opponents have to focus on survival, and all that the outside pressure achieves is to make the population more dependent on the government. Economic and financial warfare is a boon to sustaining and prolonging the control of authoritarian regimes, and that is just one of many reasons why the U.S. should stop using it in Afghanistan.