Afghanistan

A Taliban delegation discussed facilitating international financial transactions with private banks on a recent trip to Kazakhstan in a bid to ease the Afghan banking sector's isolation, the acting commerce minister said, Reuters reported. Nooruddin Azizi, acting Minister of Commerce and Industry, led a business delegation to Kazakhstan last week. In addition to banking he discussed the possibility of preferential trade tariffs, telecommunications projects and transit routes, including for possible shipments of Russian oil to South Asia, he told Reuters in an interview on Wednesday.

The board of a Swiss-based trust fund managing some $3.5 billion in frozen assets seized after the Taliban took power last year is meeting in Geneva for the first time on Monday, a Swiss government spokesperson confirmed, Reuters reported. The frozen central bank reserves were recently transferred from Washington into the 'Fund for the Afghan People' where U.S. officials say it will be shielded from the Taliban. The latter has condemned the transfer, calling it a violation of international norms. The agenda of the meeting is not yet public.

The United States on Wednesday announced that it would transfer $3.5 billion in Afghan central bank assets into a new Swiss-based trust fund that will be shielded from the Taliban and used to help stabilize Afghanistan's collapsed economy, Reuters reported. The Afghan Fund, managed by a board of trustees, could pay for critical imports like electricity, cover debt payments to international financial institutions, protecting Afghanistan's eligibility for development aid, and fund the printing of new currency.

A U.S. judge on Friday recommended that victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks not be allowed to seize billions of dollars of assets belonging to Afghanistan's central bank to satisfy court judgments they obtained against the Taliban, Reuters reported. U.S. Magistrate Judge Sarah Netburn in Manhattan said Da Afghanistan Bank was immune from jurisdiction, and that allowing the seizures would effectively acknowledge the Islamist militant group as the Afghan government, something only the U.S. president can do.

Afghanistan is inching closer towards economic collapse six months after the Taliban seized power, the Red Cross said on Friday, with a paralysed banking system stymieing international efforts to get financial aid into the war-ravaged country, Reuters reported. Organisations such as the Red Cross have been forced to rely on informal money exchanges to move cash in to pay the salaries of some workers, although most of Afghanistan's estimated 500,000 state employees have now worked without pay for months. "The banking system is totally paralysed.

The Biden administration has no plans to release billions in Afghan gold, investments and foreign currency reserves parked in the United States that it froze after the Taliban's takeover, despite pressure from humanitarian groups and others who say the cost may be the collapse of Afghanistan's economy, Reuters reported. Much of the Afghan central bank's $10 billion in assets are parked overseas, where they are considered a key instrument for the West to pressure the Taliban to respect women's rights and the rule of law.

The United States will continue to be a "very generous" donor of humanitarian aid to the Afghan people and will aim to prevent any of its assistance from passing through Taliban coffers, State Department spokesman Ned Price said on Friday, Reuters reported. "We can maintain a humanitarian commitment to ... the Afghan people in ways that does not have any funding or assistance pass through the coffers of a central government," he told reporters.

Afghanistan's banks, critical to the country's recovery from crisis, are facing an uncertain future say its bankers, with doubts over everything from liquidity to employment of female staff after the Taliban swept to power, Reuters reported. Banks were expected to reopen imminently, a Taliban spokesman said on Tuesday, after they were closed for some ten days and the financial system ground to a halt as the Western-backed government collapsed amid the pullout of U.S. and allied troops.