Taliban will negotiate with the US the release of funds for Afghanistan after the earthquake

A delegation from the taliban arrived in Qatar on Wednesday to discuss with USA a mechanism to unlock international funds and ensure that they are used for humanitarian purposes after the deadly earthquake in Afghanistan.

The White House admitted that it is working “urgently” on this issue, but a member of the Afghan central bank’s board of directors said a solution may take time to arrive.

Taliban Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi arrived in Doha with officials from the Finance Ministry and the central bank to launch the negotiations, Taliban diplomacy spokesman Hafiz Zia Ahmed said on Twitter.

For its part, the US State Department said that its special representative for Afghanistan, Tom West, would participate in the negotiation and that they wanted to focus on issues such as human rights or girls’ access to education.

“None of these commitments should be seen as legitimizing the Taliban or their so-called government, but simply as a reflection of the reality that we need to have these discussions to advance American interests,” a spokesman said.

After the rise to power of the Taliban in August 2021, Washington seized $7 billion of Afghan central bank reserves deposited in the United States in February.

US President Joe Biden wanted half of this sum to be reserved for compensation for the families of the victims of the September 11, 2001 attacks and the other half for humanitarian aid to Afghanistan, but delivering the money in a way that fell into the hands of the Taliban.

The country, already plunged into a serious economic crisis, was shaken last week by a 5.9-magnitude earthquake in the east of the country that left more than a thousand people dead and thousands homeless.

“We are working hard to resolve difficult questions about the use of these funds to ensure they benefit the Afghan people and not the Taliban,” White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre said last week.

The United States does not recognize the Taliban government in Afghanistan and, in fact, still classifies this fundamentalist movement as a terrorist group.

– Unlock controlled and audited –

A member of Afghanistan’s central bank’s board of directors confirmed to AFP on Wednesday that talks were under way, but warned they could take time.

“The details of the reserve transfer mechanism to the central bank have not been finalized,” said Shah Mehrabi, who is also an economics professor at Montgomery College in the United States.

The US State Department has not immediately confirmed these negotiations.

Mehrabi indicated that 3.5 billion dollars should be delivered to the central bank and proposed, for his part, “a limited release and control of reserves, such as 150 million per month to pay for imports.”

This measure would help strengthen the Afghan currency, stabilize prices and allow its population to acquire basic products such as bread, oil, sugar or fuel, the economist points out.

The use of these funds “can be controlled and audited independently by external cabinets,” he added.

According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, 24 million Afghans, more than half of its population, need urgent humanitarian aid.