In a letter sent Monday, U.S. Sens. Rob Portman (R-OH) and Marco Rubio (R-FL) asked Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen to “use all means necessary” to delay the release of internationally-held reserve assets to the Taliban.
The senators asked that the assets of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan should be kept out of the hands of the Taliban’s “illegitimate” Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. Highlighting the fact that “releasing any reserve assets to a Taliban-controlled Afghan government would be tantamount to providing a resource windfall to malign actors in direct conflict with the interests of the United States,” the senators said, adding that the release of the funds would support the terrorist regime.
“The Taliban are sponsors of terrorism who maintain close ties with Al-Qaeda, and therefore they cannot be trusted to distribute money to the Afghan people who desperately need it, and will instead use any and all funds to actively advance priorities hostile to U.S. interests,” the senators wrote. “We can and should work to establish alternative means of supporting the Afghan people, but we cannot allow any resources to be used to bolster an oppressive Taliban regime.”
According to the senators, the Biden Administration had frozen the Afghan government’s access to its U.S-based reserve funds. In June, Da Afghanistan Bank (DAB) reported what amounted to nearly $10 billion in reserve assets, with the majority being held internationally. Ajmal Ahmady, DAB’s former acting governor, said those assets include U.S. currency and bonds, as well as gold and World Bank Reserve Advisory and Management Partnership (RAMP) funding.
The senators also asked Yellen to urge the International Monetary Fund to temporarily block Afghanistan’s access to approximately $650 billion in allocated funds, and to work with U.S. allies to review all foreign sources of funding available to the Afghan government, including aid and relief funding, that the Taliban may seize to use for its own purposes.