US news outlets reported that the Biden administration froze Afghan government reserves held in U.S. bank accounts on Sunday.
The Washington Post quoting two people familiar with the matter reported Tuesday that the Biden administration on Sunday froze Afghan government reserves held in US bank accounts.
The action blocks the Taliban from accessing billions of dollars that were being stored in US institutions, the Post reported.
“Any Central Bank assets the Afghan government have in the United States will not be made available to the Taliban,” an administration official told the Post in a statement. The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss government policy not yet made public, the Post says.
The Afghanistan Central Bank held $9.4 billion in reserve assets as of April, according to the International Monetary Fund, which the Post noted is roughly one-third of the country’s annual economic output.
The vast majority of those reserves are not currently held in Afghanistan, one of the people familiar with the matter said as quoted by the Post. Among those, billions of dollars are reportedly kept in the United States, but the exact amount is not known.
The post reported that the decision was made by Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen and officials in the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control decided to freeze the accounts, according to two people familiar with the matter.
The State Department was also reportedly involved in discussions over the weekend, with officials in the White House monitoring the developments.
The United States did not need any new authority to freeze the reserves, because the Taliban was already facing sanctions under an executive order approved after Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, former Obama administration official Adam Smith told the Post.
According to the Post, the US Treasury Department declined to comment.
Afghanistan is one of the poorest countries in the world and relies heavily on American aid that is now in question.
Ajmal Ahmady, acting head of Da Afghanistan Bank, early Monday tweeted that he learned on Friday that shipments of dollars would stop as the US tried to block any Taliban effort to gain access to the funds.
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