[Senate Hearing 117-663]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
S. Hrg. 117-663
AFGHANISTAN'S FUTURE: ASSESSING THE NATIONAL SECURITY, HUMANITARIAN,
AND ECONOMIC IMPLICATIONS OF THE TALIBAN TAKEOVER
=======================================================================
HEARING
BEFORE THE
COMMITTEE ON
BANKING,HOUSING,AND URBAN AFFAIRS
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED SEVENTEENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
ON
EXAMINING AND ASSESSING THE NATIONAL SECURITY, HUMANITARIAN, AND
ECONOMIC IMPLICATIONS OF THE TALIBAN TAKEOVER OF AFGHANISTAN
__________
OCTOBER 5, 2021
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban
Affairs
[GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Available at: https: //www.govinfo.gov /
__________
U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
52-158 PDF WASHINGTON : 2023
COMMITTEE ON BANKING, HOUSING, AND URBAN AFFAIRS
SHERROD BROWN, Ohio, Chairman
JACK REED, Rhode Island PATRICK J. TOOMEY, Pennsylvania
ROBERT MENENDEZ, New Jersey RICHARD C. SHELBY, Alabama
JON TESTER, Montana MIKE CRAPO, Idaho
MARK R. WARNER, Virginia TIM SCOTT, South Carolina
ELIZABETH WARREN, Massachusetts MIKE ROUNDS, South Dakota
CHRIS VAN HOLLEN, Maryland THOM TILLIS, North Carolina
CATHERINE CORTEZ MASTO, Nevada JOHN KENNEDY, Louisiana
TINA SMITH, Minnesota BILL HAGERTY, Tennessee
KYRSTEN SINEMA, Arizona CYNTHIA LUMMIS, Wyoming
JON OSSOFF, Georgia JERRY MORAN, Kansas
RAPHAEL WARNOCK, Georgia KEVIN CRAMER, North Dakota
STEVE DAINES, Montana
Laura Swanson, Staff Director
Brad Grantz, Republican Staff Director
Elisha Tuku, Chief Counsel
Colin McGinnis, Policy Director
Dan Sullivan, Republican Chief Counsel
Dylan Clement, Republican Professional Staff Member
Cameron Ricker, Chief Clerk
Shelvin Simmons, IT Director
Charles J. Moffat, Hearing Clerk
(ii)
C O N T E N T S
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TUESDAY, OCTOBER 5, 2021
Page
Opening statement of Chairman Brown.............................. 1
Prepared statement....................................... 36
Opening statements, comments, or prepared statements of:
Senator Toomey............................................... 3
Prepared statement....................................... 37
WITNESSES
Adam M. Smith, Partner, Gibson Dunn and Crutcher, Former Treasury
Department Senior Advisor and Former Director, Multilateral
Affairs, National Security Council............................. 5
Prepared statement........................................... 39
Responses to written questions of:
Chairman Brown........................................... 74
Senator Reed............................................. 77
Senator Sinema........................................... 79
Naheed Farid, Member of Parliament (The Wolesi Jirga),
Afghanistan.................................................... 8
Prepared statement........................................... 53
Responses to written questions of:
Chairman Brown........................................... 81
Sue Eckert, Senior Associate and Lecturer, Center for Strategic
and International Studies and Jackson Institute for Global
Affairs........................................................ 9
Prepared statement........................................... 54
Responses to written questions of:
Chairman Brown........................................... 90
Senator Reed............................................. 90
Senator Sinema........................................... 90
Thomas Joscelyn, Senior Fellow, Foundation for Defense of
Democracies.................................................... 11
Prepared statement........................................... 61
Responses to written questions of:
Senator Sinema........................................... 91
(iii)
AFGHANISTAN'S FUTURE: ASSESSING THE NATIONAL SECURITY, HUMANITARIAN,
AND ECONOMIC IMPLICATIONS OF THE TALIBAN TAKEOVER
----------
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 5, 2021
U.S. Senate,
Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs,
Washington, DC.
The Committee met at 10:03 a.m., via Webex and in room 538,
Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Sherrod Brown, Chairman of
the Committee, presiding.
OPENING STATEMENT OF CHAIRMAN SHERROD BROWN
Chairman Brown. The Senate Committee on Banking, Housing,
and Urban Affairs will come to order. This hearing is in a
hybrid format. Our witnesses, three in person, one remote.
Members have the option to appear either in person or
virtually. Everyone who was at the markup has checked in, in
that order.
Once you start speaking there will be a slight delay before
you are displayed on the screen. I think you all know those
rules.
Speaking order will be as usual, that is by check-in and
seniority, so thank you again for all of your cooperation.
In August, we finally ended 20 years of war in Afghanistan.
Almost 125,000 people were airlifted out of the country in a
few short weeks, because of the skill and the courage of our
troops and our diplomats and humanitarian workers on the
ground.
Today, our servicemembers are out of harm's way for the
first time in two decades. Thousands of Afghans are starting a
better life in this country. We welcome, as our history
suggests, we welcome these refugees seeking freedom. Our
country has done that for generations.
But in the midst of the evacuation, we saw a country in
turmoil. An Islamic State suicide bomb attack near the airport
killed 13 U.S. troops, scores of innocent Afghan men, women,
and children. One of them, Navy Corpsman Max Soviak of Berlin
Heights, about 50 miles from where I live, was among those
killed in action, and died a hero in service of his country,
working to evacuate vulnerable Afghans and protect fellow
Americans.
Even after the evacuation ended, tens of thousands of
Special Immigrant Visa applicants and other vulnerable Afghans
remain in Afghanistan, along with many American citizens or
legal permanent residents of the U.S., including some of my
constituents.
It is now clear that the agreement that former President
Trump reached with the Taliban, which provided for the final
phase of the U.S. withdrawal process and the release of around
5,000 battle-hardened Taliban prisoners, was flawed. Many of
those released Taliban prisoners contributed to the Taliban's
quick seizure of the country. President Biden, understandably
reluctant to keep or expand the number of American troops in
harm's way while working out a better deal, observed that Trump
agreement.
It is also clear that the Biden administration and U.S.
officials failed to anticipate the rapid fall of the Afghan
Government. It is obvious that the execution of the withdrawal
was flawed.
We also now know, of course, that the Taliban never
intended, as they claimed, to pursue a peaceful path, a more
democratic path, with a broader Government with representatives
from a diverse range of ethnic groups, gender, and civil
society actors. They refuse to reject relationships with
terrorists like the Haqqani network and al Qaeda.
Three different Committees chaired by Banking Committee
colleagues--Senator Menendez with Senate Foreign Relations,
Senator Warner with Senate Intelligence, and Senator Reed with
Armed Services--have begun thorough reviews, including a series
of hearings to assess the many decisions, including mistakes
made along the way by subsequent Administrations, and possibly
by Congress, over 20 years in Afghanistan.
What is clear is that before we send our servicemembers
into another conflict we must make sure that military
engagement is truly the last resort, and that we know how we
will extricate ourselves from military conflicts before we get
ourselves into them.
Today the focus of this hearing is to look forward, to
envision what we can do to address the urgent economic and
humanitarian crisis facing the country in the wake of the
Taliban takeover, and to assess the role of economic and
financial sanctions and other counterterrorism tools against
the Taliban, tools within this Committee's jurisdiction.
With as much as 30 percent unemployment, a brain drain of
its most capable young people, enduring deep poverty, an
ongoing drought, the COVID crisis, and the collapse of
Afghanistan's economy looming, the people of Afghanistan need
help.
We must consider how the U.S. can maintain the flow of
humanitarian assistance and family remittances, while ensuring
that aid does not fall into the wrong hands. This aid has been
a lifeline to the people of Afghanistan. Millions rely on it.
It must continue, even while we deny access to funds to
terrorist actors like Haqqani, al Qaeda, and the Taliban.
As we will hear today, that is no small task, but it is
essential. The lives and livelihoods of millions of Afghans may
depend on it. We owe them that much. And we must do this while
protecting the security of Americans and preventing Afghanistan
from once again emerging as a terrorist safe haven.
The Administration has made clear the Taliban should be
judged by their actions over time, and that any decisions
regarding diplomatic recognition or the release of billions in
frozen Afghan Government reserves is far off. They have a
clear-eyed realism about who the Taliban are, while at the same
time recognizing, along with our allies, that they control the
Government and thus we must engage them, and when necessary,
hold them accountable for abuses.
If the last month is any indication, the Taliban are not
moderating their positions. They have appointed brutal old-
guard Taliban members to serve in the interim Government,
including the leader of the terrorist Haqqani network as
Minister of the Interior. They have threatened, harassed, and
attacked women and girls who were demonstrating to retain their
hard-fought freedoms. They closed Kabul's premier university to
women faculty and to women students. They converted the former
Ministry of Women's Affairs into the old, notorious Ministry of
Vice and Virtue--a pretty awful, grotesque irony.
They have harassed, beaten, and killed journalists. They
started a return to grisly public executions. They have
threatened a return to public amputations. The situation grows
more dire each day.
We know that China, Russia, and other countries that do not
share our values are already engaging in Afghanistan. They have
few qualms about funds falling into the wrong hands.
It is up to us to show the Afghan people, and people around
the world, that the U.S. will continue to be a beacon of hope
and a source of humanitarian relief.
I am eager to hear today from our four witnesses, who will
share their unique perspectives with us. We welcome you all to
the Committee, in person and remotely, and look forward to your
testimony.
Senator Toomey. Thank you.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR PATRICK J. TOOMEY
Senator Toomey. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I also want to
welcome our witnesses today and I look forward to hearing from
you.
Last month, of course, we all watched in horror as chaos
unfolded at Kabul's airport. This Administration's flawed
decisions resulted in catastrophic evacuation from Afghanistan.
Responsibility for this withdrawal, notwithstanding our
severely flawed negotiations with the Taliban under the
previous Administration, lies with President Biden.
To be clear, I felt at the time and still believe, that it
was wrong for the previous Administration to negotiate with the
Taliban to the exclusion of the legitimately elected Afghan
Government, and to agree to a full withdrawal of U.S. troops.
However, at least that agreement was conditioned on the Taliban
fulfilling certain political commitments, including achieving a
``permanent and comprehensive cease-fire,'' and agreeing upon a
``political roadmap'' for Afghanistan's future. Since it is
universally acknowledged that the Taliban failed to live up to
these conditions, the Biden administration could have chosen a
different path and adjusted their withdrawal plan without even
having violated the prior agreement. Tragically, they did not.
We know from recent congressional testimony that President
Biden ignored the counsel of DoD officials to keep a military
presence in the country longer. And we also know from recent
media reporting that the DoD urged the Administration to begin
the evacuation of Americans months earlier. Had the President
listened to this advice, America could have ended, not
continued, as the President claims, but responsibly ended our
involvement in this ongoing war on our own terms. Instead, the
terms of our chaotic exit were set by the Taliban, a terrorist
group that we have been at war with for 20 years.
Amazingly, the Administration entrusted the ``safe
passage'' of Americans, green card holders, and vulnerable
Afghans to evacuate the country to the Taliban, and did not
publicly question or challenge the Taliban's threats that we
must depart by August 31st. So it is no wonder that, contrary
to President Biden's assertion that the U.S. would stay until
every American was able to leave, in fact, hundreds of American
citizens and legal permanent residents were left behind,
including Pennsylvanians.
One such Pennsylvanian American citizen, a mother of four,
works at a middle school in the Lehigh Valley, where I live.
During the evacuation operations in Kabul, she repeatedly tried
and failed to make it to the airport. Once she was teargassed.
Another time she nearly had her passport seized by a Taliban
militant. She was just blocks away when the suicide attack at
the airport killed 13 U.S. servicemembers and nearly 200
Afghans.
The only way she escaped Afghanistan was because a
veterans' group operating on the ground found her, protected
her, and got her on a flight on September 10th. It is
unbelievable to me that a group of American civilians had to
save this woman's life because her own Government abandoned
her.
And now, as a direct result of the humiliating and
unnecessary surrender in Afghanistan, a massive humanitarian
disaster appears likely to descend on the Afghan people.
Today, thousands of Americans, green card holders, and
Afghan Special Immigrant Visa applicants, who aided the U.S.
military, and their families, are still trying to escape this
disaster. And, of course, the Afghan people, including
vulnerable women, girls, and minorities now face violence,
systemic repression, and the denial of their basic rights under
Taliban rule, something that the Afghan people have not known
for two decades.
The Biden administration has said repeatedly that the
Taliban must cut ties with terrorist groups, ensure the rights
of women and girls, conduct no revenge killings against our
Afghan partners, and allow Americans, green card holders, and
SIVs and their families to leave the country freely. As we will
hear today, the Taliban is failing on all of these fronts. They
are a brutal, murderous, terrorist group intertwined with al
Qaeda. And yet, the Administration's current posture seems
based on the naive hope that the Taliban will reform itself now
that they have taken power.
The Administration may feel pressured to provide sanctions
relief to the Taliban to address the acute humanitarian crisis
that is emerging in Afghanistan. But bestowing international
legitimacy on the Taliban and allowing them access to $7.5
billion dollars at the New York Fed would be a grave mistake.
We must be exploring ways to help the Afghan people without
empowering the Taliban.
Today we will consider critical issues that will determine
whether and how the Administration will engage with the
Taliban, including the status of sanctions on the Taliban,
which is a Specially Designated Global Terrorist organization,
now that it controls Afghanistan; the interconnectedness of al
Qaeda and the Haqqani Network and the Taliban and any new
sanctions that should be imposed on these groups; the acute
risk of Afghanistan becoming an epicenter of money laundering
and terrorist financing; Treasury's policies permitting
humanitarian aid to continue flowing to the Afghan people; the
current and future status of the $7.5 billion in Afghan foreign
reserves kept at the New York Fed; and Afghanistan's $500
million in Special Drawing Rights held at the IMF.
I look forward to hearing from today's witnesses about
these issues.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Brown. Thank you, Senator Toomey.
Let me take a moment to introduce our witnesses, then we
will turn first to Mr. Smith for his testimony.
Adam Smith, former Treasury National Security Official,
deep expertise in the implementation of enforcement of
sanctions and other illicit finance tools, has some creative
ideas on how the Biden administration might ease the suffering
of Afghans while preserving effective sanctions on the Taliban.
Welcome, Mr. Smith.
Sue Eckert, former Government official now at the Center
for Strategic and International Studies, lecturer at Yale
University, she has worked for years on sanctions and
humanitarian aid, especially on questions concerning bank
derisking, where sanctions over compliance by banks may put
humanitarian aid efforts at risk. She joins us from New York
City.
Ms. Naheed Farid is a member of Afghanistan's Lower House
of Parliament, elected from Herat, chair of the Human Rights
Civil Society Women's Affairs Committee, a member of the
International Relations Committee. She has been a fierce
advocate for the rights of women and gender equality in her
native country. She was forced to flee with her family after
the Taliban takeover. We offer you an especially warm welcome.
We admire your courage. We are honored to have you with us
today, Ms. Farid. Thank you.
Thomas Joscelyn is a counterterrorism expert at the
Foundation for Defense of Democracies, senior editor of its
Long War Journal newsletter, an expert on al Qaeda and ISIS
around the world. Mr. Joscelyn, welcome to the Committee.
Mr. Smith, please begin your testimony.
STATEMENT OF ADAM M. SMITH, PARTNER, GIBSON DUNN AND CRUTCHER,
FORMER TREASURY DEPARTMENT SENIOR ADVISOR, AND FORMER DIRECTOR,
MULTILATERAL AFFAIRS, NATIONAL SECURITY COUNCIL
Mr. Smith. Chairman Brown, Ranking Member Toomey, Members
of the Committee, thank you for inviting me to the Committee to
speak today about the economic impacts of the Taliban takeover
of Afghanistan.
In particular, I have been assessing the implications of
the Taliban's unique status as an entity that has not only
assumed control over a country but also remains subject to
sanctions. I am not aware of such a combination of sanctions
and control over a country ever having occurred before.
I have submitted written testimony to the Committee, and I
wanted to use this brief time to provide a brief overview of my
assessment. As the Committee is well aware, the economic
situation in Afghanistan was precarious even before the Taliban
took over. Eighty percent of the country's GDP comes from
donors. More than half of the population rely on humanitarian
aid. Winter is coming and thousands will likely die.
The Taliban's takeover has exacerbated this situation. They
have limited access to any assistance that remains, and their
status as a sanctioned party has essentially frozen them out of
access to any of Afghanistan's official assets abroad. The
result is a brewing balance of payments crisis and a potential
economic meltdown, as the country runs out of hard currency.
Despite the difficulties created by the Taliban's
sanctions, I have heard no serious considerations that the
entity should be removed from the sanctions list, and
rightfully so. Consequently, U.S. sanctions policy must
continue to work to limit flows and benefits to the Taliban and
other sanctioned parties. However, it must also work to ensure
that tens of millions of Afghani citizens are not victimized
twice over, once by being subjected to the brutality of the
Taliban and the second time by being denied access to basic
needs.
Such a dual policy is not altruistic, or at least not
solely altruistic. We know that without support Afghanistan
could become a failed State, the population could become
radicalized, heroin production could return to being the only
viable commercial endeavor in the country, and, of course,
China and Russia may have an open door into the country. Any of
these outcomes, let alone all of them, could be deleterious to
our national security interests and the interests of our
allies.
How should the Administration balance these competing
interests, prevent flows to Taliban, while simultaneously
encouraging certain dealings by private and public sector
actors in Afghanistan that we deem critical to our national
security interests?
My testimony speaks to two distinct strategies. The first
is a call for clarity regarding how the Administration views
the current sanctions on the Taliban. And the second is a call
for creativity, urging the Administration to use the full
breadth of sanctions authorities, including interpretive
guidance, licensing, maybe even some forward-leaning
humanitarian channels in order to calibrate sanctions
appropriately.
Regarding clarity, there is a threshold requirement for the
Administration to determine what the sanctions on the Taliban
actually mean today. There are three options. The U.S. could
view the Taliban sanctions as limited solely to those parties
specifically identified as sanctioned. This is broadly in line
with the model in place against Burma, since the coup in
February of 2021. The junta has been designated, as have
several members of the Government, and major economic actors.
However the Government of Burma is not designated and neither
is the State.
The U.S., alternatively, could view the Taliban designation
as extending to the Government of Afghanistan that they now
control but not to the State of Afghanistan. That is similar to
the model in place in Venezuela in which the Maduro regime is
designated but the country of Venezuela is not sanctioned.
And finally, the U.S. could view the sanctions against the
Taliban as extending to the Government and the State, which, of
course, is akin to the model we have in place against Iran.
As for which interpretation is preferable the more limited
approaches in place against Burma and Venezuela probably are
the ones that provide the most flexibility. But the reality is
that any of these approaches could provide the policy outcomes
that are needed, so long as commensurate authorizations and
interpretations are provided.
My second strategy is a call for creativity. The
Administration could deploy more authorizations and licenses to
allow the private sector to assist in promoting U.S. interests.
Presently, the Treasury has issued two general licenses,
regulatory exemptions to deal with the Taliban and the Haqqani
Network.
If the Administration seeks to limit the flow of funds to
the Taliban and Haqqani Network while promoting the benefits to
the Afghani people, more general licenses are going to be
needed. In Venezuela, for example--where the Government is
sanctioned but the State is not--there have been over 30
regulatory exemptions issued in order to limit the exposure of
the average Venezuelan to the sanctions imposed on the Maduro
regime.
Second, the Administration could develop a humanitarian
channel, a process that was started in the context of Iran. In
such a model, if a party provides the U.S. Government diligence
and information, the Administration could provide an assurance
that the U.S. Government finds the channel is not problematic
from the perspective of sanctions.
Third, creativity is needed with respect to Afghanistan's
funds overseas, which include the funds in the Federal Reserve,
the Special Drawing Rights at the IMF, et cetera. In this
regard, the Administration could also borrow some lessons from
Iran sanctions. In the Iran model, certain Iranian funds are
immobilized abroad, outside of the country in financial
institutions, and cannot be repatriated. However, they can be
used under supervision for approved bilateral trade,
principally humanitarian and benign consumer goods. I think
this model could be of interest in Afghanistan--it would allow
the people of Afghanistan to potentially benefit from these
funds while leaving the funds themselves outside the reach of
the Taliban.
The Administration needs to leverage the flexibility of
sanctions. There is clear limit, regulatorially or
precedentially, about the creativity of how one can implement
sanctions. And leaning in in this regard is not just a moral
approach but very much an approach that we need to pursue in
order to achieve our core foreign policy and national security
interests.
I look forward to your questions.
Chairman Brown. Thank you, Mr. Smith.
Ms. Eckert joins us from New York City. Ms. Eckert,
welcome.
Ms. Eckert. Thank you. Chairman Brown, Ranking Minority
Member Toomey, and other Members of the Committee. It is an
honor to [audio interruption].
Chairman Brown. We have lost you, Ms. Eckert. Something
happened on your end.
Ms. Eckert, until we can fix this jointly we will move on
to the next witness. Sorry about that.
Ms. Farid, welcome again. You are recognized for 5 minutes.
STATEMENT OF NAHEED FARID, MEMBER OF PARLIAMENT (THE WOLESI
JIRGA), AFGHANISTAN
Ms. Farid. Thank you for having me and inviting me to this
Committee. Chairman Brown, Ranking Member Toomey, Members of
Congress, my name is Naheed Farid. I am a member of Afghanistan
Parliament representing the people of Herat, which is my
hometown. I have served in Parliament for more than 11 years,
and since 2019, I have been the Chairperson of the Human Rights
Civil Society and Women's Affairs Commission. And here in
Washington, DC, I am on the advisory board of the U.S.-Afghan
Democratic Peace and Prosperity Council.
I appear before you today still in shock that the Taliban
and the Haqqani Network and al Qaeda have taken over
Afghanistan. For years, my family and I have faced death
threats from the Taliban. I cannot count how many friends and
colleagues I have lost to Taliban violence.
A week before they took Kabul, the Taliban entered Herat,
found my house, searched for my family. Luckily, my family and
I were able to escape, but we just left everything behind.
For Afghan women of my generation, we remember the Taliban
from the 1990s. This sudden takeover of the country brings back
so many of the nightmares. When I was a girl growing up in
Herat, I loved going to school, becoming a pilot 1 day. When
the Taliban took control of Herat, they shut down the schools,
and I was forced to spend all of my time at home with my female
relatives.
Today what we, as Afghan women, have known all along is
clear for the world to see. The Taliban cannot be trusted.
Afghan women and girls face blatant gender apartheid by
Taliban, and a return to the 1990s. The Taliban have stripped
most women of the ability to work. Girls cannot participate and
attend secondary schools. Young women who grew up in a free and
open society are now hiding in fear.
Make no mistake. The Taliban govern through fear. Their
soldiers indiscriminately whip civilians in the street. They
have resumed public executions and mutilations. They have
committed forced displacements and atrocities against Tajiks
and Hazaras in Panjshir, Daikundi, and other places of
Afghanistan. They have curbed free speech and decimated
Afghanistan's once-thriving media sector that we had.
So how can Congress help the Afghan people? I have had so
many meetings with Members of Congress these past few years and
I know so many of you feel a deep bond with the Afghan people,
a deep bond with Afghan women. And what the Afghan people need
right now are three things: one, immediate humanitarian
assistance; two, legislation that prohibits U.S. recognition
and normalization of relations with the Taliban; and three,
support for local NGO's and civil society who can deliver basic
services in the absence of a normal Government.
Afghanistan faces a dire humanitarian crisis. Because of
the health care system collapse, many internally displaced
persons, and widespread food insecurity in the winter that is
coming, without outside assistance, more Afghans will suffer
and more Afghans will die. But the Taliban cannot be allowed to
set terms and conditions on how this humanitarian assistance is
delivered and who it is delivered to. Humanitarian corridors
need to be established where international and local NGO's can
do their work without any interference from the Taliban.
The Taliban regime cannot be trusted. Because of their
hardline beliefs and their partnership with dangerous terrorist
groups, the Taliban pose an imminent threat to the region and
to the world. I urge the Members of this Committee to support
legislation that prevent any U.S. Administration from
recognizing the Taliban and normalizing any relations with
Taliban. I encourage the Members of this Committee to act
quickly, in a bipartisan way, to draft and pass legislation
that encourage no U.S. Administration ever recognizes the
Taliban. Not only can the Taliban regime be trusted, it also
has minimal capacity for governance.
We are witnessing the breakdown in basic services such as
health care, education, banking and finance, aviation, and many
others. The U.S. should not provide the Taliban with capacity-
building support. Instead, the U.S. should provide direct
support to Afghan NGO's and civil society. As someone with a
background in nonprofit management and a family foundation that
has built many schools for girls throughout Afghanistan, I know
firsthand how valuable local NGO's are to so many ordinary
Afghans, especially to women and girls. The U.S. Government
must find ways to provide funding, capacity-building, and also
support to these local organizations and NGO's through a ready,
trusted corridor.
I will stop here, and I am looking forward to the
questions. Thank you
Chairman Brown. Thank you very much, Ms. Farid.
We will return to Sue Eckert, Ms. Eckert, in New York.
STATEMENT OF SUE ECKERT, SENIOR ASSOCIATE AND LECTURER, CENTER
FOR STRATEGIC AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES AND JACKSON INSTITUTE
FOR GLOBAL AFFAIRS
Ms. Eckert. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member Toomey,
and Members of the Committee. It is an honor to appear before
you today. I am only sorry I cannot join you in person, but
there are meetings at the U.N. Security Council and with member
States to talk about the future of the al Qaeda, ISIL, and
Daesh Committee this year, that I am involved with.
Thanks to the Committee for focusing on this very important
topic, which is critical not only for U.S. security and foreign
policy but to the lives of millions of Afghan citizens.
Adam has laid out very well the sanctions situation as it
applies to Afghanistan, so I want to take my brief time to
focus on five points.
The first is, as our previous speaker just noted, the dire
and deteriorating humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan. Second,
the need for additional measures by OFAC, to support NGO's and
to continue their programs in support of the Afghan population.
Third, the importance of action at the U.N. Security Council to
ensure continuation of humanitarian assistance into
Afghanistan. Fourth, the need for international action to
create secure and safe channels to move funds into Afghanistan
to support NGO's in the near term. And fifth, to take this
opportunity to review the U.S sanctions system overall, and
improve the process to restore humanitarian exemptions and
prevent similar situations in the future.
First, the humanitarian situation. As noted, even before
the Taliban took control, Afghanistan was experiencing one of
the worst humanitarian crises in the world. Between COVID,
climate change, the 2021 drought, and persistent insecurities
and violence, Afghanistan has been in dire need. Over half the
population of Afghani citizens are in need of humanitarian
assistance. Food security is deteriorating rapidly, with only 5
percent of households consuming adequate levels of food. Recent
reports are that 3 out of 4 households now limit portion sizes,
with adults eating less so their children can eat more.
The health system is rapidly deteriorating. With decreasing
access to health care there is more measles, diarrhea, and
polio, and less resources to respond to the COVID situation. As
the World Health Organization noted, 17 percent of over the
2,300 health facilities previously supported by international
assistance are suffering and are not fully functional. Two-
thirds of these facilities have run out of essential medicines.
David Beasley, former U.S. Congressman and now Executive
Director of the World Food Programme, has pleaded that the time
is now. We cannot wait 6 months. We need action now, before the
winter sets in.
Second, the sanctions situation complicates the delivery of
aid, but there are steps that can be taken to clarify and
alleviate some of these challenges. The Biden administration
issued new general licenses that are very welcomed and very
important steps.
But there is need for additional moves to continue delivery
of assistance. Here we need to extend authorization beyond just
basic humanitarian needs to other programs supporting Afghan
citizens, and for which the international community has devoted
years and billions of dollars supporting.
In addition there is need for clarification as to who the
Taliban is, as Adam discussed previously.
Third, the U.N. Security Council needs to safeguard the
continuation of humanitarian action. The Security Council
resolution adopted on August 30th called for strengthened
efforts to provide humanitarian assistance and the support of
all donors.
But there is need for additional action now. Guidance that
sanctions are not intended to impede humanitarian action and
that member States must implement these measures consistent
with their commitments under international humanitarian law is
one step, but there is a need for a humanitarian carveout, to
ensure that these activities and humanitarian assistance can
continue. In that regard, the current exception that exists in
the U.N. Somalia sanctions regime represents a very good model.
Fourth, we need to develop new ways for funds to get into
Afghanistan. It is going to be months before the financial
system stabilizes and international payments can be regularized
to NGO's. In the meantime, we need a safe and reliable system
to move humanitarian funds in.
In the medium term, we need to deal with financial
institutions to provide the kind of incentive assurances for
them to continue to support NGO operations. As Adam said, we
need to think creatively about ways to address these derisking
issues.
Finally, this crisis brings into stark relief some of the
systemic challenges that exist and as such, provides
opportunities to improve the U.S. and the U.N. sanctions
processes to safeguard humanitarian action through exceptions.
Time after time, we have faced this situation. Just this year
humanitarian organizations faced with the threat of being
forced to withhold humanitarian assistance from Yemen following
the designation of Ansarallah in January. Situations in Burma,
Ethiopia, and Afghanistan demonstrate the need for systemic
reform to create standing carveouts for humanitarian action.
And in this regard we need to seriously look at restoring the
IEEPA exemption, which is contained in the act that the
Committee passed a number of years ago, but which has been
routinely waived.
These recommendations do not assume that any of this is
necessarily easy, and we need to be realistic about the
situation in Afghanistan, which is extremely complicated for
NGO's working there. But I think that the overwhelming
imperative is to act now, consistent not only with our
humanitarian and human rights values but with our national
security and foreign policy interests as well.
Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Brown. Thank you, Ms. Eckert.
Mr. Joscelyn is recognized for 5 minutes. Thank you for
joining us.
STATEMENT OF THOMAS JOSCELYN, SENIOR FELLOW, FOUNDATION FOR
DEFENSE OF DEMOCRACIES
Mr. Joscelyn. Well, Chairman Brown, Ranking Member Toomey,
thank you for inviting me to testify here today. You know, I
have done this a number of times. Unfortunately, in the past, I
was warning about the impending security situation or fall of
the Afghan Government. Now we are dealing with the aftermath,
of course.
And what I want to focus on here today is that many of the
factors that we focused on for years at Long War Journal, that
led to the collapse of the Afghan Government and the victory
for the Taliban and, indeed, al Qaeda, are still relevant for
the discussions and debates you are going to be having today
and in the future.
In particular, I am going to make three quick points. The
first one is that as you, Chairman Brown and Ranking Member
Toomey, both recognize, the Taliban's relationship with al
Qaeda is unbroken. We heard that from the generals last week
when they testified here on the Hill. We have heard that from
Secretary of State Blinken.
I think that is a remarkable fact, if you think about it,
right. After 20 years of war and more than 10 years of on-
again, off-again diplomacy led by the U.S. with the Taliban,
during which time the State Department and the military were
desperate to have the Taliban throw al Qaeda under the bus,
they did not, right. They stood by them this whole time. That
is a remarkable fact, and if you think about it, why is that?
Why is it that after all these years, going back, in fact, to
even the 1990s when the U.S. Government first started trying to
pressure the Taliban to break with al Qaeda, why is it that
after a generation they have not?
And I think the answer is that there is a lot more to that
relationship than many people realize, a lot more to that
relationship than people in the U.S. Government realize. And I
am going to give you a few details along those lines.
But before I move on to my second point, I want to note
that in early September the Taliban, after they took over
Afghanistan, they took over, of course, all the media outlets,
and one of the things they did, when they controlled the media
in Afghanistan, was they broadcasted a video called
``Victorious Force 3.'' I suggest if you look at some of my
testimony or some of the stuff I post online you can watch it,
and I suggest everyone does. Because they are still saying, no,
in 2021, that we deserved to be attacked on 9/11. That is the
official Taliban line. That has been the Taliban's line since
Mullah Omar first uttered it on September 26 of 2001, for 20
years now, unbroken. For 20 years straight they have said that
America deserved to be attacked on 9/11. That is remarkable.
The second point I want to talk about is that the Taliban's
regime is an authoritarian regime. The new Taliban is, in fact,
just the old Taliban in many ways. In fact, as I was preparing
my written testimony today I was struck by the fact that one of
the guys I included in my write-up is a guy named Hassan
Akhund. He has been named the Head of State, or so-called Prime
Minister of the Taliban regime. Of course, he is not really a
prime minister, is he? They do not really work that way. But
that is the title they gave him in some of the press reporting.
But Akhund was actually first sanctioned by the U.N. in
early 2001, 8 months before 9/11, and it was Akhund who, on
behalf of the Taliban, rejected the first overtures by the U.N.
to get the Taliban to turn over Osama bin Laden. In fact, in
1999, it was Akhund who said, when the U.N. demanded that bin
Laden be turned over, it was Akhund who answered on behalf of
the Taliban and said, ``In fact, we will not turn over Osama at
any price.'' Those are his words.
The Interior Ministry of this authoritarian regime is
controlled by Siraj Haqqani. Chairman Brown, you mentioned
that. Siraj Haqqani, you can look at my testimony, he is an al
Qaeda man. There is this idea that the Taliban is one thing,
the Haqqanis are another, and al Qaeda is a third thing. That
model has been wrong all along. The Haqqanis have a controlling
interest in the Taliban. They always did. The Haqqanis play a
lead role in controlling hierarchical positions throughout the
Taliban, and, in fact, the special forces of the Taliban, that
won the war, including the suicide bombers who played such a
prominent role in defeating Afghan forces in America and
Afghanistan, were run by the Haqqanis, and we can get into that
a little bit more, what that means, because it actually plays
out in terms of the security around the airport in Kabul,
involved an Haqqani special forces outlet that actually
specializes in suicide bombings. Very spooky, actually.
So the Interior Ministry is run by Siraj Haqqani and his
family, which has been in bed with al Qaeda since the 1980s. In
fact, they incubated and helped build al Qaeda. The
Intelligence Ministry is run by another guy, known as Abdul Haq
Wasiq, who was a former Guantanamo detainee. He too was
sanctioned in early 2001 by the U.N. before 9/11, and he was
sanctioned, why? Because he, as the deputy head of intel at
that point for the Taliban actually oversaw foreign fighters
for al Qaeda coming into the country and helped protect al
Qaeda's training camps.
So if you think of this as an authoritarian regime, which
it is, and they are going to implement their draconian version
of Sharia on the Afghan population, as Ms. Farid can tell you
better than anyone, and they are, the guys are actually pulling
the levers of power for this authoritarian regime, have
dossiers that are littered with al Qaeda references.
The third point I would make very quick is that I, too, am
very concerned about the Afghan people. We, of course, got to
know quite a few of them during our time doing this, the Long
War Journal. I would just emphasize something that Ms. Farid
said. She said when it comes to humanitarian assistance, do not
let the Taliban decide.
That is a very important, powerful point, because this
authoritarian regime here in Afghanistan, to the extent that
any humanitarian assistance flows through the Taliban to the
Afghan people, that will strengthen their authoritarian regime
and legitimize their governance.
I am very open to any of the ideas that Mr. Smith or other
have for sort of providing carveouts around sanctions for
humanitarian assistance, working with NGO's, as Ms. Farid said,
and others. There are all sorts of options we can explore. But
do not empower the Taliban's regime. Thank you.
Chairman Brown. Thank you, Mr. Joscelyn.
I will start my questions with Ms. Farid.
You, for years, have been a fierce advocate for the rights
of women and girls in Afghanistan as women have made real
strides and emerged in key roles throughout society. Your
leadership role as a member of the Parliament, the many able
and distinguished Afghan women with whom you work are key
examples.
I know you touched on this in your opening statement but
can you describe the current situation for women and girls
following the Taliban takeover in urban settings like Kabul and
provincial cities like in your home of Herat, and in rural
settings?
Ms. Farid. Thank you. Thank you so much. You know the
situation in Afghanistan is very, very difficult for women.
Like 15 million of the population of Afghanistan that are women
think that they are abandoned and they have been forgotten. I
mean, there was no precondition of women's rights, human rights
in the last years of the achievements of Afghan women and
Afghan people and Afghan democracy in the peace process with
the Taliban. And even with the individuality there was no
precondition. And that is the problem that people of
Afghanistan are thinking, that why, and especially women, why,
after 20 years, we have been forgotten at this level, at this
level that 50 percent of the people that are women, and many
frontrunners of the democratic process in Afghanistan, actually
they are in a situation that they do not know where to hide. We
had to escape instead of championing them. We actually cannot
help them at this point. They are very helpless.
Chairman Brown. So what more should the U.S. and our allies
do to protect the rights of women and girls? What specifically
should we do?
Ms. Farid. In fact, people of Afghanistan, women of
Afghanistan, they deserve the Government they want. They
deserve the Government that was not enforced on them, the
Government that they want to choose. And U.S. has to help the
Afghan people, the Government that was not forced by
atrocities, by violence, on the people of Afghanistan.
This has to be the strategy, that we have to stand with the
people of Afghanistan. And we have to be against the enemies of
people of Afghanistan, and those who have no plan and strategy
to help the people but they have the strategy to attack the
rest. And they have no strategy to do the governance in
Afghanistan. See the health care system. See the education
system. See women. See girls. They cannot attend secondary
schools.
So the reality is that those syndicates, terrorist
syndicates, that took place in Afghanistan, they have no idea
how to govern Afghanistan. It has to be a group of NGO's,
internal NGO's, original NGO's, international NGO's, to fill
the gap, to fill the vacuum, and support the Afghan women to
provide jobs for them, through capacity building, through
providing the basic needs of health care and education to them.
At the same time, Taliban should not decide. Taliban should
not say who should receive this aid. Taliban should not put
conditions on it. And this is, at least, this is the option
that we can start with, but there have to be more options to
explore in the future.
Chairman Brown. Let me follow that way of thinking about
the Taliban obviously not deciding with Ms. Eckert and then Mr.
Smith. Same question. Treasury has issued new licenses to
support the continued flow of humanitarian assistance to people
of Afghanistan and other activities that support basic human
needs while upholding and enforcing our sanctions against the
Taliban and the Haqqani Network. What more should Treasury and
State be considering, including with international banks, to
ensure the people of Afghanistan continue to receive aid
without benefiting the Taliban. Ms. Eckert first, and then Mr.
Smith, answer that, please.
Ms. Eckert. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I think OFAC needs to
issue additional general licenses authorizing NGO programs that
go beyond basic human needs, and here we are talking about
programs, we are talking about areas of protection and
prevention, women's programs, conflict and stabilization,
education. These are all programs in which the international
community has invested billions of dollars over the last 20
years, and they help individual Afghan people, not the Taliban.
These programs should continue. The way OFAC has currently
defined the general licenses, they apply to a narrow set of
activities. I think that what we need to do is to broaden it to
what used to exist for Yemen, Burma, and Ethiopia, through the
broad range of NGO activities.
Chairman Brown. Mr. Smith, can you respond to that too?
Mr. Smith. Thank you, Chairman Brown. I think that is
right. Licenses and exemptions need to be expanded. I gave an
example in my opening statement that if we really want to
expand and limit the exposure of the average Afghani,
significantly more licenses are going to be needed.
But outside licenses there is one other component that I
wanted to talk about, and I mentioned it briefly in my opening
statement, and that is what to do with, or how to leverage
safely the funds Afghanistan has outside the country. Now we,
of course, should not just identify them as Afghani and let
them go. That is not wise. Apart from the issue of sanctions,
the Taliban does not have the technical capacity to even manage
them for the benefit of the Afghani people.
But I do think that the Iranian model, in which there are
funds essentially frozen overseas, in jurisdictions that
continue to buy Iranian oil, those funds are not able to be
repatriated to Iran but they can be used, and they are used
with the oversight of local institutions and with the U.S.
looking on very careful, for the provision of basically
approved bilateral trade, which is humanitarian goods and other
sort of goods in kind.
I think if you focus on using these funds not to provide
currency but rather to purchase goods for the Afghanistan
people that could be promising. Will there be some seepage to
the Taliban? Unfortunately I think there will be, but it is
much, much harder to make fungible in-kind goods than just
opening the spigots of cash.
So I think we need to be very creative and learn the
lessons we have learned in other jurisdictions in this context
as well.
Chairman Brown. Thank you. Senator Toomey.
Senator Toomey. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Ms. Farid, first
of all, thank you so much for being with us today. Just very
briefly, if you could, because I think we should be clear about
this, you fled Herat shortly before the Taliban took the city.
When they took the city they came looking for you and your
family. What would they have done had you not fled and had they
found you?
Ms. Farid. They would have killed me.
Senator Toomey. They would have killed you.
Ms. Farid. Yeah.
Senator Toomey. Mr. Joscelyn, you made a very interesting
point, if I understood it correctly, in your written testimony.
I think it is fair to say that you suggest that the distinction
between the Taliban and the Haqqani Network is really a Western
construct. It is not very meaningful to these people. They are
so completely intertwined that it is a meaningless distinction.
Do I have that right?
Mr. Joscelyn. That is absolutely correct, Senator.
Senator Toomey. So money going to the Taliban is the same
thing as money going to a notorious terrorist network, because
they are one in the same.
Mr. Joscelyn. Correct. The Haqqanis have a controlling
interest in the Taliban.
Senator Toomey. Right. So Mr. Smith made a point that I
think is very, very interesting and important one. One of the
things I worry about extending licenses of all kinds, to all
kinds of groups, to conduct all kinds of activities sounds to
me like it is likely to include funding, and money is
inherently fungible. I worry that it gets in the hands of the
Taliban, one way or another.
But goods, humanitarian goods--food, medicine, basic human
needs--those are harder to convert into things like weapons and
terrorist activity. So to get them there I assume entails
significant logistical challenges, not to mention security
challenges.
My question really for each of you is, should the United
States be attempting to create or encourage, facilitate, some
kind of international peacekeeping ability to provide security
for humanitarian corridors to delivery lifesaving goods? Does
that make sense?
Mr. Joscelyn and then Ms. Farid and Mr. Smith.
Mr. Joscelyn. All I can say I would be a large sum of money
the Taliban would not allow that. They are an authoritarian
regime, as I said, and they are going to control the show.
Senator Toomey. All right. Ms. Farid.
Ms. Farid. I think besides having a peacekeeping coalition,
United States needs to partner with a regional player, a
regional actor, to Afghanistan. So there will be a base of
humanitarian assistance near Afghanistan, where NGO's can
operate, where NGO's can have staff that can collect wages
there. I think that also is very important, that this corridor
has to have a base around Afghanistan, in a country like
Tajikistan.
So we have to have partners with the United States around
Afghanistan that can facilitate this corridor, and also this
banking system should not operate inside Afghanistan because
the head of central bank of Taliban is a terrorist, and any
money that goes through Western Union, any added procedure,
they have had, they can block, they can do anything with that
money.
Senator Toomey. Mr. Smith.
Mr. Smith. Ranking Member Toomey, I think to the extent the
establishment of the channel for physical goods is possible,
leaving aside what Mr. Joscelyn thinks would likely happen, I
think it is critical. Whether or not the U.S. should do it on
its own is a different story. I do think that
multilateralization of these efforts, especially with regional
partners, like Ms. Farid suggests, I think is really the way
forward, and, of course, leveraging truly multilateral
components, be it the World Bank, be it the United Nations,
UNDP, and others.
So yes, I agree with you. I think that opening the spigots
for funds is much, much more dangerous than opening the spigot
for goods, foods, and other sorts of services that are not so
easily fungible.
Senator Toomey. Well, what about Mr. Joscelyn's point that
it is unlikely that the Taliban would tolerate any foreign
force, even one that does not have a history of antagonism, for
instance? Is that a serious obstacle?
Mr. Smith. I think it could be a serious obstacle, for
sure, and I do not think we need to recognize the Taliban to
potentially, on a transactional basis, deal with the Taliban.
And so I think that over time, especially if the situation in
Afghanistan gets more and more dire, there may be openings to
allow this sort of very transactional approach to allow certain
goods or services into Afghanistan. But it may be a while, and
there may be some quid pro quos, that the Taliban tries to
exert on that basis.
Senator Toomey. Well, just to be clear, my own view is that
it would be a monumental mistake for us to recognize the
Taliban, and I am sympathetic to the idea that Ms. Farid
suggested, that legislation to preclude that might make a lot
of sense. Thank you.
Chairman Brown. Thank you.
Ms. Eckert. Mr. Toomey.
Chairman Brown. Yes, Ms. Eckert. Go ahead.
Ms. Eckert. I wanted to respond to Mr. Toomey's question as
well. As the mandate for UNAMA, the U.N. mission in
Afghanistan, is being considered in early 2022, the U.S. will
have the opportunity to advocate for what kind of U.N. presence
on the ground that we are going to have.
I do not think that anyone is talking about turning on the
financial spigot and handing out cash. What we are talking
about is getting funds into the country for NGO's to pay staff,
to buy goods that they need, and to distribute the kind of
humanitarian assistance that we all support.
So I do not see anyone saying that we need to either
recognize Taliban or sanctions on the Taliban or provide any
kind of support to the Taliban. We are talking about providing
assistance to the Afghan people.
Chairman Brown. Thank you, Ms. Eckert.
Senator Warren from Massachusetts is recognized.
Senator Warren. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
So I have been clear that I believe that President Biden
made exactly the right decision to withdraw from Afghanistan.
As General Milley testified last week, in response to my
questions at the Armed Services hearing, another few months or
another few years were unlikely to have changed the outcome of
the war. And I actually looked up General Milley's words and
brought them with me, because here is what he said. ``The end
state probably would have been the same, no matter when our
troops pulled out.''
General Milley also acknowledged to me, at this hearing,
that our troops would have been needed indefinitely in order to
continue to prop up the Government, and that it would have been
at great risk, not only to our troops but also to the Afghan
people.
So let me just ask--I have three of you here--does anybody
disagree with General Milley's assessment? I take that as three
head shakes no, that nobody disagrees.
Mr. Joscelyn. I do not disagree, Senator. I mean, we have
covered the insurgency--I have covered the insurgency for 12 to
15 years of my life, and there is no doubt that the end state,
you could keep pushing it off. Our suggestion, Senator, real
quick, was that if the U.S. was leaving some years ago it was
to leave in a way that allowed the Afghans to own the right.
Our big critique was that across two Administrations that never
happened. Now maybe it would have failed anyway--it probably
would have--but at least allow them to own the fight, and I do
not think we did.
Senator Warren. Well, I appreciate that you want to push
back on this, but I also asked about that question, about how
we exited Afghanistan. And the point that the generals made,
although there has been criticism from the Republican side of
the house, is the military designed the withdrawal, and
executed the withdrawal, they were given every resource and
every bit of support that they asked for, and we faced what we
faced, when the Government fled and when the military, the
Afghan military, laid down their arms and melted back into the
countryside. So they had everything they asked for in this
withdrawal.
You know, for years, the DoD leaders told the Armed
Services Committee and the American people about the great
progress that we were making. But as we know from the
Afghanistan papers published by the Washington Post, that
simply was not true.
So some of our military leaders, the same military leaders
who have basically been wrong about Afghanistan for nearly 20
years now, wanted to leave troops in Afghanistan but leave them
there forever, because if we brought them home the Afghan
Government would collapse.
Now the Republicans are trying to make this an issue, not
because of oversight but because they think it helps them
politically. During the Trump years, the Armed Services
Committee only held four public hearings on Afghanistan. Over
those 4 years, the Taliban was making steady gains, year by
year. I do not recall this Committee ever having a hearing on
Afghanistan before today, and I welcome our colleagues' new-
found interest in oversight over Afghanistan, but I wish they
had been interested 5 years ago, or 10 years ago, when it might
have made a real difference.
The President made the right decision to withdraw. I do not
think I am hearing any objection on that. Once he made that
decision he followed the advice and recommendations of the
military in executing the withdrawal. And now that we finally
ended our military presence in Afghanistan I agree it is time
to have a sanctions policy that does not make it more difficult
for the Afghan people to have a chance to rebuild. That is our
sole responsibility here.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Brown. Thank you, Senator Warren. Senator Rounds
from South Dakota is recognized.
Senator Rounds. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And while I was
going to begin with a line of questioning with regards to how
we get the relief back in to Afghans who are starving, and yet
right now I think I have to respond a little bit. I think I was
at all of the same meetings as my colleague from Massachusetts,
and I came away with a slightly different approach that was
being conducted.
It is my understanding, in reviewing and in listening to
the generals, three of them, who were before our Armed Services
Committee, not just in public session but in classified
sessions, they made it very clear that they would never
withdraw on a date certain, and that to a person, the
recommendations that had been provided was to do a conditions-
based withdrawal with the hopes that, first of all, it would be
a withdrawal that was not in chaos and it would have allowed
the Afghan Government an opportunity to continue with a reserve
force continuing there. The conditions-based versus date
certain would have allowed that the al Qaeda and the Taliban
would have been held in check.
I am just going to--and, ma'am, I am going to begin with
you. Would you share with us, as a representative of the
Parliament of Afghanistan, what your expectations had been with
regard to a transfer of the responsibilities for the defense of
Afghanistan directly to the national Government? Can you share
what your goals had been and what happened when there was a
date certain established?
Ms. Farid. Thank you so much. Both questions--I want to
answer both questions, actually. You know, the day that Doha
agreement was signed it emboldened Taliban. Then the withdrawal
announcement even gave them more power that demoralized the
Afghan national security forces, and that led to more
demoralization of the people of Afghanistan.
OK, so there are so many factors that contributed to the
situation, that one of them was a hasty withdrawal. The hasty
withdrawal was one of the reasons that, unfortunately, led to
the situation that we have right now.
You know, the level of loss that Afghan security forces had
was 100 casualties per day. That level of loss is unsustainable
for any security forces in the world. It is unbelievable that
we are losing 100 soldiers per day.
OK. So this was the situation, unfortunately. Besides, the
air force was grounded because of the withdrawal, because half
of the air force had to have the maintenance that the
contractors already left due to the withdrawal. That also
contributed to the situation.
And we also lost so many brave commandos, brave soldiers,
policemen, police officers in the front line of the battle of
fighting against global terrorism, against Taliban, al Qaeda,
and Haqqani Network. OK, we should not forget them and we have
to admire them.
But at the same time, I, as a member of Parliament, and
many in my Parliament, we used the platforms, different
platforms, including being the advisory board of the DPPC,
Democratic Peace and Prosperity Council. At 1 week before the
collapse, we met with Armed Services Committee and Foreign
Affairs Committee of the Congress, telling them about the
pending collapse of Afghanistan.
Factors inside of Afghanistan also contributed to the
situation. For example, the mismanagement of the peace process
by Afghanistan Government, President Ghani, and his national
security advisor, the mismanagement of war before by isolating
so many advisors and generals, and replacing them by loyalists
that surrendered to Taliban just in the months of July and
August also contributed to the situation.
But here we are. We could have been in a better situation
if the announcement of the withdrawal would not happen at the
beginning of this seasoning of fight of Taliban. If U.S. could
wait a few more months until the winter finished, and the
fighting season of Taliban would have finished because so many
other things happened that peace still happened, the withdrawal
announcement also happened, and demoralized the situation, and
the soldiers of the army and Afghan national security forces
and defense forces, we would have been in a better situation.
Senator Rounds. Thank you. My time has expired. Thank you,
Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Brown. Thank you, Senator Rounds. Senator Menendez
of New Jersey is recognized.
Senator Menendez. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am glad to see
the Banking Committee is interested in foreign affairs issues,
so good to have the hearing.
Let me ask Mr. Smith. OFAC issued two general licenses on
September 24th to better facilitate the flow of humanitarian
aid to Afghanistan. How exactly do these licenses work, and how
does the Treasury ensure that assistance does not go to the
Taliban or the Haqqani Network?
Mr. Smith. Thank you, Senator. Both of those are very good
questions. The way the licenses work--or maybe to begin with,
why the licenses are needed. Both the Haqqani Network and the
Taliban are sanctioned parties, which means that any individual
who is a U.S. person, U.S. company, U.S. party, non-U.S. party
that engages on transaction through the United States, cannot
engage with the the Taliban or the Haqqani Network without
risking criminal and civil liability.
These licenses allow exemptions to these broad
prohibitions, allow certain exemptions that are specified in
the licenses, to provide certain goods that are articulated
within the licenses to certain individuals and certain parties.
One of these licenses granted covers the activities of the NGO
community, which includes not just the U.S. Government as
Government organization but the multilateral organizations and
nongovernmental organizations as well, providing humanitarian
services. And then the other license is principally concerned
with the delivery of food, foodstuffs, medicine, et cetera, as
well.
So both of those licenses allow activities that would
otherwise be prohibited, namely potential transactions with
parties that are sanctioned. Those licenses allow those
exemptions to permit the activities that are articulated.
It is a good question, and Ranking Member Toomey, I think,
asked this question as well. How do you make sure that the
benefits do not go to the Taliban? That is a great question,
and I think the way the licenses are structured, and, frankly,
the reporting obligations and the oversight that people are
going to impose on the licensees, are going to require a lot of
care and carefulness with respect to parties who want to use
them.
But I think one of the key pieces that makes this perhaps
less likely to be abused in that fashion is what they are
asking to be delivered usually, at least on the second license
with respect to medicine and medical devices, are hard goods,
right, in-kind goods, as opposed to just funds.
So is it possible that in-kind goods could be taken off the
truck by the Taliban and sold on the market for hard currency?
Of course it could. It is significantly more difficult,
however, for that to happen than if just cash was put into the
system, in the hands of anybody.
So I think that is the key issue, is trying to focus on
much more in-kind goods and services rather than simply cash-
flows into the country.
Senator Menendez. Well, you know, you have a Taliban
Government that has Haqqani-sanctioned individuals in its
Government. And so while we want to, of course, assist the
Afghan people, we have to be robustly resolute that the Taliban
does not get access to these funds, especially when we have
sanctioned individuals in their Government. Otherwise, our
sanctions regime is meaningless, at the end of the day.
Let me ask you, the OFAC general licenses--I will ask both
you and Ms. Eckert--were welcomed by humanitarian organizations
as a necessary protection for those NGO's seeking to stay and
deliver in time of skyrocketing humanitarian need in
Afghanistan. However, we have seen, in contexts, general
licenses are sometimes necessary but not necessarily sufficient
to ensure humanitarian NGO's have sufficient financial access
to provide assistance in crisis areas under the control of
sanctioned actors.
What additional actions should OFAC consider to safeguard
aid operations in Afghanistan, and if the United States chooses
to differentiate between sanctioned Taliban officials and
ministry bureaucrats that work under them, how do we ensure
that the Taliban does not divert away from the vulnerable
groups?
Ms. Eckert.
Ms. Eckert. Thank you, Mr. Menendez. As you noted the
Administration took the very critical step of authorizing the
transmission of goods, services, et cetera, of NGO's to support
the range of humanitarian activities that meet basic human
needs.
But that is only part of the question. The other is how can
funds be delivered to the NGO's in-country? Currently there is
a critical liquidity crisis in Afghanistan. The banks have
limited to $200 a week the amount of withdrawals that can
happen. We have frozen the cash--the Taliban is enormously
strapped. The central bank does not have Afghani notes and they
do not have U.S. dollars. So there is a real liquidity crisis.
So for U.S. banks or for banks to support humanitarian
action they are going to be very hesitant to send funds into
Afghanistan, and legitimately so, because even the banks who do
not have an interest by the Government have very significant
concerns about to whom they can let the funds go.
For this reason I think one of the things that the U.S. and
the international community need to do is to establish this
unique, safe payment channels or mechanisms in order to
negotiate the transmission of funds for humanitarian and NGO
activities. And this is something that will require thought,
and as Adam notes, creativity. But it is something that we need
to work with financial institutions to accomplish because there
are high-risk places such as Afghanistan that banks are not
going to take the risk of transferring funds.
I have had financial institutions tell me--North Korea, for
example--even though there are humanitarian needs there, they
do not want DPRK-related transactions on their books. So they
are being very hesitant, and in order to encourage them, once
the financial situation in Afghanistan stabilizes--because
right now we do have this liquidity crisis--once it stabilizes
we are going to need to provide some level of encouragement and
incentives.
One possibility is actually providing some kind of
formalization of OFAC's policy about nonenforcement. But there
are a number of things that need to take place as part of the
discussion with financial institutions, but right now they are
not going to be able to get the funds in. We need a channel to
get funds and goods that can go for these purposes, and to be
controlled so the Taliban does not have access to it.
Senator Menendez. Well, thank you. I will be monitoring
this very closely. Thank you.
Chairman Brown. Thanks, Senator Menendez. The Senator from
North Carolina, Senator Tillis, is recognized.
Senator Tillis. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you all
for being here, and Mr. Joscelyn, it is good to see you again.
Mr. Joscelyn testified before Senate Armed Services last week.
Mr. Joscelyn, I think I am going to start with you. The
Taliban, to me, is no different today than it was 20 years ago.
They may be slightly more sophisticated. They may be a little
bit better on social media since it emerged since then. But
they are still ruthless, they are murderers, they repress
women, they threaten children.
So should the USG ever grant the Taliban access to
Afghanistan's foreign reserves, including the $7 billion at the
NY Fed?
Mr. Joscelyn. I agree wholeheartedly with your
characterization of the Taliban being the same old Taliban, and
I would have a lot of reservations about granting them access
to any hard cash.
Senator Tillis. Yeah, and the reason for that is that if we
thought that it was going to go to fund medical facilities in
the outlying areas of Afghanistan, which we now know are going
to be in retreat, if we thought it was to operate schools that
young girls could go to, then certainly we would not be having
this discussion. It is because we know what it is going to go
to. It is either going to go into the pockets of corrupt
Taliban leaders or it is going to go to support their malign
efforts, including their relationship with al Qaeda.
Ms. Farid, do you agree with that?
Ms. Farid. I agree, and I also addressed at the beginning
that this money will go to Taliban. They should not even be
given the permission to have, on the condition on any decision
regarding the humanitarian corridors and funds to Afghan
people.
Senator Tillis. And Mr. Smith?
Mr. Smith. Absolutely. I think the money, if you give the
money to the Taliban, that that is what is going to happen.
Senator Tillis. Is it also true that, first, the Taliban is
having a problem paying their light bills, and it looks like,
you know, their primary source, they import virtually all of
the electricity in a grid that they constantly blew up when
they were in various parts of the country? So their main
sources are smuggling, the opium trade, and now maybe mineral
mining, with the help of China.
But should any ``governing''--I use in quotes--body, should
they ever be seriously considered for any sort of recognition
by the IMF or any other world agency?
Mr. Smith. I certainly do not think so. I do, however,
think we can delink the question of recognition from the
broader question of how to provide services and support to the
Afghani people.
Senator Tillis. Mr. Joscelyn, you can add to that if you
want to, but how do you think China's role there, particularly
with mineral extraction, is going to blossom in the coming
months and years, and what kind of threat does that rise to an
inflow of cash that could help stabilize the Taliban
administration? I refuse to call them a Government.
Mr. Joscelyn. On the first point about recognition, no,
absolutely not. There is no reason to give them a political
victory to compound their military victory. They are the same
old Taliban.
China has been willing to do business with the Taliban for
quite some time. We tracked the Doha delegation. We go from
meeting with U.S. officials in Qatar and all of a sudden, a few
weeks later, they would be in Beijing, cutting deals with the
Chinese. We do not know the terms of those but we know the
Chinese are basically willing to play ball for mineral
extraction and for other initiatives.
The one thing that the Taliban has to guarantee the Chinese
Government is that they will not allow the Turkistan Islamic
Party, which is, in fact, part of al Qaeda, and fought for the
Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan in its resurrection. They have
to guarantee that the Uyghurs in Turkistan Islamic Party will
not actually attack in Xinjiang, will not cause terrorist
operations. It remains to be seen if they can deliver on that
guarantee.
Senator Tillis. Ms. Farid, you are clearly the most
experienced in terms of the life that you lived in Afghanistan,
and the extraordinary accomplishment that you made as a female
Afghani and being elected. What opportunity exists out there,
with a Nation of 39 million people, half of whom are less than
19 years old, I think probably 70 percent of whom are less than
25 years old. So they have gotten a glimpse of what life can be
without a Taliban leadership. What optimistic message can you
send to the men and women who fought there, who sowed those
seeds?
Ms. Farid. I want to quote one of our officials of
Afghanistan that said that Afghanistan is not dead; it is
wounded. And the majority of the population, 70 percent are
under the age of 30, 50 percent of the population are women.
They are all there. Afghanistan exists, and as I told you, a
syndicate took over as a group that want to rule Afghanistan by
force, but that is not the Government the people of Afghanistan
want. People of Afghanistan want to choose who rules the
country--maybe a woman. Maybe a woman.
And that is why I am very hopeful. I am hopeful that the
allies of Afghanistan people, including U.S. Congress, continue
to help Afghan people, Afghan women, build the corridors to
help capacity building and local NGO's of Afghanistan, building
a coalition, a global coalition to ban any coordination of
Taliban, and also helping humanitarian friends to go to
Afghanistan and prevent the problem and the shortage of food
and the shortage of health care that people of Afghanistan are
suffering.
Senator Tillis. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Chairman Brown. Thank you, Senator Tillis. Senator Warner
from Virginia is recognized.
Senator Warner. Thank you, Senator Smith--I mean Senator
Brown.
[Laughter.]
Senator Warner. I appreciate the Committee having this
hearing, and I have only got one question for the panel, but I
do want to frame a little bit of this. I feel like--and I will
be careful of how I state this, sitting from my position on the
Intel Committee--I think the intelligence community frankly got
it right here. They were predicting weeks and months from when
we left, in terms of the demise of the Government, not days or
weeks. I do not think any of us could have necessarily
predicted that President Ghani would have cut and run the way
he did.
And I also share some concerns about the Administration,
but I think frankly the biggest mistake the Administration made
was not warning the American people that when you exit a
country after 20 years involvement, there was no easy way for
that to happen, and that decision, which had been initiated by
President Trump--and I do not even necessarily criticize him,
because I think as things will come out we will see that there
were huge concerns, and I give credit to the incredible story
of Ms. Farid, but concerns about this Government that were
dating back years.
And, you know, with the awful exception of the bombing that
took place a few days before our troops left, the fact that we
had gone for a year plus with no American soldiers killed in
combat--and that does not erase the tragedy of the 13 American
soldiers but also the countless Afghans that were murdered by
that ISIS-K bombing.
I share Senator Tillis' comments, and I think probably the
Committee, that the Taliban has not changed. But we have an
enormous challenge going forward. I share we should not be
granting recognition, but we do still have this uneasy--we
should not lose sight of the fact that the American military,
along with our services, got 125,000 people out of Afghanistan,
the largest airlift ever, and an overwhelming number of
Americans. The fact that, you know, we do not keep tabs on
Americans regardless of country, so the idea that there were
still some left, they do not have to self-identify. Many of
them are dual citizens. Many even in the days leading up did
not want to leave yet because they still had family and others.
One of the stories--and again, this is just, I think, a
factual basis, I am not making a judgment--that even after our
troops left we still see a trickle, but a steady trickle, of
American citizens, green card holders, and SIVs coming out,
either on charter flights or certain commercial flights,
particularly from Qatar.
So how we manage this relationship while we still have
either citizens and/or Afghan allies, to extract them from
country, is, I think, tricky, and we need to tread carefully,
again, not by any means thinking that the Taliban have changed
their stripes but realizing that in this kind of period right
now, if we can still get people out, that is helpful.
The question I want to ask for the panel, and I am down to
only a minute left so I would apologize. I am gravely concerned
about China and the Communist Party of China filling part of
the vacuum, and I believe, sir, you touched on part of this,
but how big of a threat and concern should that be for us in
this country, please?
Mr. Smith. Thank you, Senator. I think it is a significant
concern. As Mr. Joscelyn pointed out, and as we know from
around the world, China does not have the same views as we do
on moral and human rights issues, on the ability to deal with
Governments that we may not like, and I think their willingness
to go in, if only for Belt and Road reasons, if not for
minerals or otherwise, I think is rather significant. And they
have made it very clear, frankly, that they have wanted to go
in for 20 years and have not been able to.
But I do think they are standing there, and I think the way
to fill a vacuum is by filling a vacuum, and I think we need to
do that through licenses and clever engagements with the Afghan
people. But I agree, it is not necessary to engage with the
Taliban itself.
Ms. Farid. Actually, Afghanistan's problem was not just a
national problem. It is a proxy war that so many Afghan people
actually suffered from that proxy war, that the players in the
region want to have intelligence inside of Afghanistan to
attack their adversaries. But the situation right now is
getting very complicated because Taliban are isolated and they
have engagement with U.S. adversaries, and one of them is
China.
And just thinking that China can protect the borders, and
it is far away from Afghanistan, and it is a little bit in
upper geography of Afghanistan, in Badakhshan, that cannot be
accessed easily, I think that is not correct. China is going to
be a player in the future in Afghanistan, because they already
had some relationships with Taliban, through Pakistan, and
Pakistan facilitated that, unfortunately.
Mr. Joscelyn. Just real quick, I would just say, look, I
think the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan is probably going to
join the anti-American axis on the world stage, where China and
other actors are basically emboldening anybody who is against
us, and they are willing to do business with them on an amoral
fashion, because they do not play by the same rules, as Mr.
Smith said, as we do.
It is part of the reason why I am skeptical of the argument
that America has leverage over the Taliban now and the
Taliban's Government with financial aid or anything else. I do
not think that is true. I think that the Taliban can turn to a
number of bad actors for support, and they are already doing
so.
Senator Warner. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Ms. Eckert. Mr. Warner.
Chairman Brown. Ms. Eckert.
Ms. Eckert. Might I just add one point? It is very clear
that China will act in its best interests and it will try to
take advantage of the situation whereby the United States is
not there now. However, we do have some shared interest, that
China has largely been a supporter of efforts to counter al
Qaeda, ISIL, and other terrorist groups. They have no reason to
want regional instability, and I think an economic and
humanitarian crisis there is not something that benefits them
either.
So we have some common ground to work with other countries
who do not necessarily share our values but do not want to see
this become a safe haven again for terrorists and their
activities.
Chairman Brown. Thank you. Thank you, Senator Warner.
Senator Hagerty from Tennessee is recognized.
Senator Hagerty. Thank you. Thank you, Chairman Brown,
Ranking Member Toomey. I appreciate you holding this. And
Senator Warner, I share your concerns about China's interest
here. I fear deeply that assets like Bagram, that lithium
deposits could actually become a crown jewel in China's Belt
and Road, so thank you for raising that issue.
I would like to turn my questions eventually to you, Mr.
Joscelyn, coming back to the fact that the Biden
administration's catastrophic withdrawal has created a series
of colossal economic, humanitarian, and national security
crises that are going to continue to unfold over the next few
years. And I share the views that have been shared by many
here, that the Taliban are unreformed. In fact, they may feel
vindicated politically in what they have accomplished. And I do
not think any of us share their violent and retrograde world
view.
It is very clear that the Biden administration needs to
work to ensure that the world does not recognize the Taliban as
the legitimate Government of Afghanistan, and this
Administration must work to restrict the Taliban's access to
financial resources, which I agree, the Taliban will use to
further this sadistic behavior.
Since 2002, the Taliban has been designated as a specially
designated global terrorist organization, which makes them
subject to counterterrorism sanctions. This designation must
remain, and Treasury must be cautious when considering any
loosening of the sanctions regime that we already have in
place.
Members of this Committee and this Administration may be
tempted by a false choice that resources can somehow safely be
channeled to halt a humanitarian catastrophe. But this wishful
thinking, I feel concerned, will result in yet another national
security catastrophe when the Taliban inevitably redirect those
funds to their own purposes.
We cannot support a Government or an economy that is
inseparable from a terrorist organization. Mr. Joscelyn, you
have already noted that Sirajuddin Haqqani, as the leader of
the Haqqani Network, also serves at the Taliban's deputy
leader. He is the Interior Minister of the new Taliban
Government. And you already noted the Taliban, Haqqani Network,
al Qaeda are essentially the same.
So my question to you, Mr. Joscelyn, would you recommend
that this Administration formally designate the Taliban as a
Foreign Terrorist Organization?
Mr. Joscelyn. I think, as a matter of fact, if the Haqqani
Network is a Foreign Terrorist Organization, and it is and has
been since 2012, then the Taliban should be. Haqqanis have a
controlling interest in the Taliban. It was that sort of
distance between the two that was imagined by the U.S.
Government. It does not actually exist.
And so if we are going to deal in facts, then I would say
yes, the Taliban should be a Foreign Terrorist Organization,
but it is almost something beyond that, right? It is almost
beyond even a State sponsor of terrorism at this point. As Mr.
Smith said, we have really a terrorist State. It is not even
just a terrorist-sponsoring State. And so it is almost like a
new category beyond our normal categories.
Senator Hagerty. You have gone at this briefly with Senator
Tillis, and I have got slightly different numbers. It may be $7
billion. I have got $9.5 billion of Afghan central bank funds.
But are there any circumstances under which you would recommend
that we release those funds?
Mr. Joscelyn. I cannot imagine any.
Senator Hagerty. I thought so.
Another question for you, and this is very concerning. Do
you believe that it is possible that the Taliban turned a blind
eye that regrettable day that ISIS attacked the Abbey Gate, the
day that we lost 13 American servicemembers? What do you think
might have happened that day?
Mr. Joscelyn. Senator, I cannot say with certainty. What I
can say is that days before the bombing we wrote up a report in
Long War Journal about the security forces that were being
placed by the Taliban outside the airport. Those security
forces were heavily dominated by an arm of the Taliban known as
the Badri 313. You can go through the history of Badri 313.
They specialize in suicide and complex suicide attacks, and, in
fact, they honor, throughout their propaganda, a guy named
Ustadh Yasir, who was an Osama bin Laden man, worked for bin
Laden and Zawahiri and helped build this paramilitary force for
the Taliban and the Haqqanis. And they glorify martyrdom.
So do I know that they let him through? No. Do I have any
evidence that they did? No. But we were very suspicious before
the attack of why it was that Badri 313 was stationed outside
the airport.
Senator Hagerty. I agree with you. I am deeply concerned as
well. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Brown. Thank you, Senator Hagerty. Senator Van
Hollen from Maryland is recognized.
Senator Van Hollen. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you to
all our witnesses here today. We, of course, do not have time
in this hearing to go over all the mistakes the United States
made in its policies toward Afghanistan over the last 20 years,
but given some of the comments I hear this morning and from
some of our colleagues on the other side of the aisle, I think
it is important to explain what the Biden administration
inherited.
It was October 2018, when the Trump and strongarmed the
Government of Pakistan to release two Taliban commanders. One
was the cofounder of the Taliban and the other was number two,
Baradar, who we see in all these photos. They then went to Doha
and cut the Afghan Government out of the negotiations, further
undermining their credibility. Then they told the Afghan
Government, that was not at the table, to release 5,000 Taliban
prisoners, many of whom returned to the battlefield.
Then we had an agreement that said do not attack U.S.
forces but go ahead and attack the Afghan forces with impunity.
And by the way, let us also tie the hands of the Afghan forces.
You cannot enter villages after dark but the Taliban can.
That is the situation that the Biden administration
inherited. And after all that, Donald Trump criticized
President Biden for not pulling out our forces even earlier, in
April. So it is great to hear all this revisionist history. It
is interesting to hear folks criticize the situation now, when
we did not hear a peep earlier on.
So here we are. It is a desperate situation. The Taliban is
in control of the country. But I do think that we have an
obligation to try to provide humanitarian assistance, and yes,
we have to make sure it does not go through the Taliban.
So some have proposed that we add sanctions on top of the
sanctions regime that we already have, including designating
the Taliban as a Foreign Terrorist Organization. As I look at
this, it is not clear to me what additional leverage we gain,
but it does seem that we could put in jeopardy independent,
international organizations that would be providing
humanitarian assistance and potentially subject them to
criminal and other penalties.
Mr. Smith, what is your view of that?
Mr. Smith. I think that is exactly right, Senator. They are
already sanctioned, and so at least in one respect there is not
much difference if you were to make them an FTO other than the
concerns you just suggested. And we know that this is the case
because when the Houthis in Yemen were designated an FTO at the
end of the Trump administration, this was the big concern of
the U.N. and other agencies, that if they were FTOs they would
have to pull out and not be able to work with them. So I think
that is a very real concern.
If the issue is do we have enough control or sort of
coercive authority on them right now, I would argue we do. The
SDGT designation is significant. It limits U.S. persons from
engaging with them, and U.S. banks or otherwise.
But the FTO designation I do not think is needed, and I
think does have that added risk you just suggested.
Senator Van Hollen. And others have suggested that we
designate Afghanistan, the country of Afghanistan as a State
sponsor of terror. Would not that, in fact, de facto recognize
the Taliban Government as the legitimate Government of
Afghanistan?
Mr. Smith. It may well. I think we are definitely in a new
world here of having a sanctioned terrorist group take over a
country. So I have not quite figured out whether an SST
designation would require an identification of Taliban as the
Government, but it probably would. That would be an ironic and
unfortunate outcome.
Senator Van Hollen. Right. So again, as you pointed out we
already have a sanctions regime on the Taliban. That sanctions
regime already creates lots of leverage. The question of
whether we can successfully utilize that leverage is another
question.
What should we be looking for, Mr. Smith, in terms of
whether or not our withholding of assistance in order to get
the five concessions we talked about--a more inclusive
Government, which, of course, is not in existence today; human
rights extended to women and girls; making sure that
Afghanistan is not again used as a platform for terrorist
attacks; and the other conditions--what should we be looking
for in terms of any conduct from the Taliban to suggest that
that kind of pressure is working? Because count me as a
skeptic, as others, but what would you be looking for?
Mr. Smith. You know, I think we are all skeptical, and I
think for good reason. And so I am concerned that those
requests are sort of falling on deaf ears and perhaps they are
going to be impossible to meet in the near term.
But much as we have negotiated and discussed engagements
with parties we do not like in the past, be it Iran, for
example, there are times when we can figure out ways to engage
with people with whom we do not like, with whom we do not
agree, with whom we do not recognize on a transaction-by-
transaction basis.
So I think that we go small steps by small steps. I do
think we need to open up some humanitarian corridors, and there
is a bit of risk, I have to admit. And if the Taliban do not
behave themselves, as Mr. Joscelyn suggested they will not, and
they may well, then we have to reassess. But I think this is a
step-by-step process that could take quite some time.
Senator Van Hollen. Thank you. Time is short. I could go
on, but thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Brown. Thank you, Senator Van Hollen. Senator
Moran from Kansas is recognized.
Senator Moran. Chairman, thank you. Mr. Smith and Ms.
Eckert, I worked with my colleagues, both Republicans and
Democrats across the aisle to try to alleviate the humanitarian
crisis in Yemen, where the key parts of the country remained in
control of the Houthis. What, if any, lessons from that
experience can be applied to our situation in Afghanistan?
Mr. Smith. Before turning it over to Ms. Eckert, who has
quite a bit more experience in Yemen, I think the example I
just gave to Senator Van Hollen, with respect to the FTO
designation, is a big one. When the Trump administration called
the Houthis a Foreign Terrorist Organization the impact was
really quite severe and quite immediate with respect to
multilateral organizations like the U.N.
And so I think that is one of the lessons that we learned
from there, that we do not necessarily need to go that far in
order to maintain the leverage that we have.
Ms. Eckert.
Ms. Eckert. Thank you. Let me just say that there was a
crisis that was averted, and thank you for your role in doing
that, by having had the Ansarullah, the Houthis, as a Foreign
Terrorist Organization. From NGO's who were working, providing
food and humanitarian assistance in Yemen, they indicated that
even with the announcement that they were going to designate
them as an FTO, they ceased operations. And so there was a
significant drop in the assistance that went in with that
announcement. So the FTO designation would have been
devastating in cutting off humanitarian assistance into Yemen.
In reference to Senator Van Hollen's question, if the
Taliban would be designated as a State sponsor of terrorism,
leaving aside the question of recognition, which is a legal
question that I do not know the answer, it would prohibit a
whole range of assistance, under the Foreign Assistance Act. No
funds can go to a State sponsor of terrorism.
The current designations and sanctions, as well as the
frozen assets and reserves, maintain a good amount of leverage.
And it may be, as our colleagues have suggested, that
ultimately this will not prove successful in moving the
Taliban, but we do not need additional sanctions at this point
in order to complicate the situation even more.
Senator Moran. Thank you both for your answers.
Mr. Joscelyn, in your written testimony you declare that
the U.S., quote, ``Never had any leverage over the Taliban, and
there is no good reason to think that it has any now.'' So if
the prospects for humanitarian aid and other assistance will
not work, and decades of sanctions have not worked, what path
do you propose we follow?
Mr. Joscelyn. You know, I really do not know. To be honest,
I have documented this for so long. All I can say is I have
seen all of these different things attempted and we never did
have any leverage over them, and I can give you all the reasons
why I say that.
I hear what Mr. Smith is saying, and I also have similar
language in my testimony about hard humanitarian assistance. He
said it better than I did. In-kind, hard goods, I think that is
the best way to go to try and help the Afghan people.
But in terms of this idea that we are going to be able to
use funds or money or any of this assistance to gain leverage
to change the Taliban from being something other than the
Taliban, I think we have 25 years of experience that says that
is not going to happen.
Senator Moran. Thank you for your straightforward
nonanswer. It was an answer, and I appreciate it.
Ms. Farid, special envoys from China, Russia, and Pakistan
met with the Taliban officials last month. China and Iran have
pledged aid. How did the Afghans view this?
Ms. Farid. This is really unfortunate, as I said before,
that Afghan people are experiencing a regional battle inside of
Afghanistan, and Pakistan is always thinking of Afghanistan as
its strategy dips. And so many of the other issues contributed
to the fact that now we have China, we have Pakistan, we have
Russia, and other countries like Iran that are backing Taliban.
Taliban are not the Government that Afghan people want. Afghan
people want a free, democratic country and free, democratic
Government that they choose by themselves. I mean, they have
continued this resistance.
You see that resistance of the people in social media. You
see how brave the women and men of Afghanistan are, saying that
we do not want this kind of Government and this kind of
atrocity and this kind of bloodshed and mutilation and public
execution of the people in front of our kids.
As a matter of fact, we have to let the world know that
Taliban are not the Government, that people of Afghanistan
want--they have engagement with the terrorist groups in the
region. They have terrorists in the cabinet. They have
terrorists who are on the wanted list of United Nations and the
blacklist of United Nations, and this Taliban has to be wiped
out from Afghanistan. Afghan people have to have the right to
choose who they want to have as a ruler of the country.
Senator Moran. Thank you. Thank you for your clarity. Mr.
Chairman, thank you to you and Senator Toomey for hosting this
hearing.
Chairman Brown. Senator Smith of Minnesota is recognized.
Senator Smith. Thank you, Chair Brown, and thank you very
much to our panelists. I realize that we are running a little
short of time and so I am going to ask just one question, Chair
Brown. I know that Reverend Warnock is interested in asking
questions as well, so I will be brief.
But I would like to direct my question to Ms. Farid, if I
could. Thank you so much for being with us today, and thank you
so much for your courageous work advocating for women and girls
in Afghanistan.
My question is this. The Taliban takeover of Afghanistan
has resulted in interruption of education for thousands of
women and girls, and it is unlikely that many of them will be
able to resume that education, particularly in rural areas.
This is a huge blow.
My question is, if women continue to be excluded from
educational and employment opportunities what do you see as the
long-term impacts to the economic security of Afghan women and
their families, and do you think that this will further
exacerbate the ongoing economic crisis that we see in
Afghanistan? And then just as a follow-up, what are the most
important things that we could do to build capacity right now?
Ms. Farid. Thank you. Very important question. The women of
Afghanistan showed to the world, in the last 20 years, how
brave they are, and they showed that they can be agents for
change. And Taliban recognized that, understand that, that if
they let women of Afghanistan continue to be as free as they
have been they will change the country, and then there will not
be a suppression that Taliban have. They cannot continue to do
the same rules that they have right now over Afghanistan if we
have a different situation for women.
So that is a fundamental issue. Taliban do not want women
to be a part of the development, because they are afraid, and
in the future we will have a country that cannot fly, because
one wing is not able to fly. Women, half of the population, and
that is the reality.
Senator Smith. You make such a good point that it is not
only the economic capacity of Afghan women but also the
political and organizing capacity of Afghan women that is
jeopardized. So thank you.
Ms. Farid. Thank you.
Senator Smith. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Brown. Thank you, Senator Smith. Senator Daines of
Montana is recognized.
Senator Daines. Thank you, Chairman Brown.
President Biden's disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan
has made our Nation less safe. We lost 13 American troops who
were heroically conducting a rescue operation that could have
been completely avoided in the first place. The Administration
left an untold number of Americans, some of our veterans'
closest Afghan allies, behind enemy lines, and the U.S. is now
far more vulnerable to terrorist attacks down the road.
In fact, according to General Milley, is not confident that
the U.S. could deny al Qaeda or ISIS the ability to use
Afghanistan as a launchpad for terrorism, both in the region
and around the world. This reckless withdrawal from Afghanistan
was completely bungled, mismanaged, and its harm to our
national security will be seen and felt far beyond those tragic
weeks that we saw in August. It will hurt our security for the
months and the years ahead.
The chaotic withdrawal also triggered a refugee crisis that
has only worsened Americans' confidence in the Biden
administration. In late August, the Secretary of Homeland
Security grated humanitarian parole status into the United
States to tens of thousands of Afghans. They provided us
flowchart after flowchart of how vetting these individuals is
supposed to work, but far from sufficient proof that it is
working as promised.
Indeed, 6 weeks later, the Administration still has not
told us much about these individuals. How many worked directly
and verifiably with U.S. troops or others in our Government? We
have asked but they have not answered. What is the age and
gender breakdown of the Afghan parolees? These are not
difficult questions. We have asked; they have had no answer
back.
And most importantly, we have asked for detailed
information about what, if any, vetting of parolees was done
beyond database checks among Federal agencies. More than a
month later we still do not have reliable or complete answers.
We have also asked how many Afghans at overseas U.S.
military bases were identified as being possible threats and
transferred to Kosovo for additional screening. Again, no
answer.
Just last Friday, my staff visited Camp Upshur in Quantico
to see firsthand the situation on the ground. They left with
more questions than answers. DHS and State Department officials
at this location were unable or unwilling to answer very simple
and direct questions brought about demographics, vetting, or
prioritization of those who were brought into the U.S. from the
lily pad sites.
The Administration's refusal to answer these questions has
created tremendous unease among many Americans, and that is
unacceptable. I stand with our U.S. veterans in support of
welcome fully vetted Afghan SIV holders to our country, or
another allied country. But I am troubled the Biden
administration has been unwilling or unable to demonstrate how
many parolees actually meet the SIV criteria or how many were
Priority 1, 2, or 3 refugee applicants before being granted
parole status.
The Biden administration has an uphill battle, to show the
American people that the people paroled are not a security
threat. Isolated incidents regarding alleged crimes by parolees
do not help that perception.
But the first step toward increasing the confidence is
finally answering our very legitimate questions. In short,
President Biden owes it to the people he was elected to serve
to address these concerns without further delay. I am pushing
Congress to create a joint committee to examine Afghanistan and
the effects this disastrous withdrawal has caused.
Mr. Joscelyn, given General Milley's sentiment that
terrorist organizations will make a resurgence in the next
couple of years, what do you see as the greatest vulnerability
to America's security, and how do we prevent terrorists from
exploiting it?
Mr. Joscelyn. I think there is a fundamental
misunderstanding, even in General Milley's comments, about the
resurgence of a terrorist threat in Afghanistan. I do not think
that they really understood that al Qaeda was marbled
throughout the Taliban insurgency and was helping the Taliban
win the war.
Besides all the tactical things that I worry about, in
terms of plots that they can attempt, I think that what has
been underestimated here is the degree to which their victory
is a boon for the global jihadist movement. We have been
tracking jihadist groups all across Africa, the Middle East,
and in South Asia. I can show you more than 30 statements from
these groups and other high-ranking individuals saying that
they see the Taliban's victory as a sign that the divine will
is with them, to achieve victory globally. This is a morale-
booster for anti-American terrorists in many places.
Senator Daines. Thank you, Mr. Joscelyn. Thank you, Mr.
Chairman.
Chairman Brown. Senator Warnock from Georgia is recognized.
Senator Warnock. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for
holding this critically important hearing.
The war in Afghanistan is America's longest war, and by its
conclusion, two decades after it started, we were deploying men
and women who were not even alive when the conflict started.
Although Afghanistan has been mentioned before--mentioned--
in this Committee, in the context of terrorist financing and
Iran sanctions, today is the first time, since 2001, that the
Senate Banking Committee has held a hearing specifically
focused on Afghanistan. And so I am grateful to Chairman Brown
and Ranking Member Toomey for holding this hearing.
One of the key components of U.S. strategic failure in the
war was an inability to develop reliable and preferable options
for Afghans to build an economy that is not based on illicit
drugs or minerals that other foreign powers like China and
India seek. Failure was also due to an inability to stem the
widespread corruption that crippled the ability of the national
Government to govern effectively and build trust among the
people. We saw that play out at the end, but it was a reality
long before August 15th.
Mr. Smith and Ms. Eckert, I would like to hear from you on
this question. Recognizing that the U.S. war effort was a
whole-of-Government endeavor, not just what is happening with
soldiers on the battlefield, and knowing how critical
Afghanistan's economic viability was to success and failure,
what questions should this Committee and Congress have been
asking over the last 20 years, and what can we learn from this
lack of oversight to prevent a similar blind spot from
happening again elsewhere?
Mr. Smith. Thank you, Senator. If what we are asking is how
could we have built a better system in the past 20 years, which
I think is really the fundamental sort of question here, I
think we can learn a lot from the military and the failures of
the Afghan military, which I understand stemmed, in part, from
the U.S. trying to build a military in our image as opposed to
a military that the Afghans could actually sustain on their
own. They built structure but not institutions.
I think that is true throughout the society. And so we
built quite a lot of structures with respect to terrorism
financing, banking system, payment systems even, in
Afghanistan. But my concern is we have not built the
institutions. We have not built with the foundations and with
the roots that could be self-sustaining.
And so I think that is the real question with respect to--
``Nation-building''--I do not think is the word we are going to
be using anymore, but really the building of societies, the
assisting of societies. How do we make sure that we build
something that is sustaining and not something that just has a
structure on top of no foundations? So I think that is
throughout the system and not just in the military but the
economic system, the humanitarian system, social system, and
otherwise.
Senator Warnock. Thank you. Ms. Eckert? You are muted. Ms.
Eckert, we cannot hear you.
Ms. Eckert. Excuse me. Can you hear me now?
Senator Warnock. Yes, we can. Thank you.
Ms. Eckert. Thank you. Thank you very much for the
question, and I agree with you that we really do need a serious
assessment of the last 20 years of U.S. policy, not just the
past 2 months of U.S. policy vis-a-vis Afghanistan. And in
order to do that I think we really seriously must examine why
it went wrong, or why it did not achieve the goals that we
wanted.
I do think that Congress, through SIGAR, the Special
Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction, research to follow
what has happened to U.S. programs and international programs
that we have tried to put in place.
The Committee, however, by virtue of its jurisdiction has
responsibility for oversight of a number of these financial
programs, sanctions, terrorism financing, et cetera. Too often
the Congress provides general authority and does not do much
oversight on implementation. There are, undoubtedly, and very
clearly as we can see unintended consequences of some of these
sanctions policies, especially on the delivery of humanitarian
assistance.
With the Afghanistan situation as a case in point, now is
an opportune time for this Committee to review these
consequences and to try to reform our system so we do not have
to go through these kinds of emergency situations of
authorizing humanitarian assistance. The Committee could play a
critical role by reestablishing the humanitarian exemption in
section 203(b) of the International Emergency Economic Powers
Act, that it enacted in 1977 but which has been routinely
waived since 2001.
So I look forward to the Committee undertaking some of
these efforts. Thank you Senator Warnock and thanks very much
for your thoughtful question.
Senator Warnock. Well, thank you so much, and it is
wonderful to talk to you about this, on the first hearing on
Afghanistan in this Committee, 20 years later. But these
questions clearly are not centered around August 15th, when
Kabul fell to the Taliban, but the 7,264 days we had American
soldiers on the ground, engaged in war, when many in this
Committee, frankly, were not paying much attention.
Thank you all so much, and Ms. Farid, we are inspired by
your courage and your service.
Ms. Farid. Thank you so much.
Chairman Brown. Thank you, Senator Warnock, for your
thoughtful comments.
This has been a comprehensive and useful survey of the
issuing facing the international community in Afghanistan, the
looming economic and humanitarian crisis facing the people in
that country under Taliban rule. I thank our witnesses for
their assessments of the situation there, how the U.S. and our
allies might usefully work to ensure the continued delivery of
critical humanitarian and economic assistance to the people of
Afghanistan while denying to the Taliban, al Qaeda, and other
designated terrorist groups the use of, or the ability to
benefit from such funds. So thank you all.
For Senators who wish to submit questions for the record
those questions are due 1 week from today, Thursday, October
12. To the witnesses you have, please, 45 days to respond to
any questions.
Thank you again. The hearing is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 11:54 a.m., the hearing was adjourned.]
[Prepared statements and responses to written questions
supplied for the record follow:]
PREPARED STATEMENT OF CHAIRMAN SHERROD BROWN
In August, we finally ended 20 years of war in Afghanistan. Almost
125,000 people were airlifted out of the country in a few short weeks,
because of the skill and courage of our troops and our diplomats and
other humanitarian workers on the ground.
Today, our servicemembers are out of harm's way for the first time
in two decades, while thousands of Afghans are starting a better life
in this country. We welcome these refugees seeking freedom, just as our
country has done for generations.
But in the midst of the evacuation, we also saw a country in
turmoil. An Islamic State suicide bomb attack near the airport killed
13 U.S. troops and scores of innocent Afghan men, women, and children.
Navy Corpsman Max Soviak of Berlin Heights, Ohio was among those killed
in action, and died a hero in service of his country, working to
evacuate vulnerable Afghans and protect fellow Americans.
Even after the evacuation ended, tens of thousands of Special
Immigrant Visa applicants and other vulnerable Afghans remain in
Afghanistan, along with many American citizens or legal permanent
residents of the U.S., including some of my constituents.
It's now clear that the agreement former President Trump reached
with the Taliban, which provided for the final phase of the U.S.
withdrawal process and the release of around 5,000 battle-hardened
Taliban prisoners, was flawed. Many of those released Taliban prisoners
contributed to the Taliban's quick seizure of the country.
President Biden, understandably reluctant to keep or expand the
number of American troops in harm's way while working out a better
deal, observed that agreement.
It's also clear that the Biden administration and U.S. officials at
many levels failed to anticipate the rapid fall of the Afghan
Government. And it's obvious that the execution of the withdrawal was
flawed.
We also now know, of course, that the Taliban never intended, as
they claimed, to pursue a peaceful path, a more democratic path, with a
broader Government with representatives from a diverse range of ethnic
groups and civil society actors. They refuse to reject relationships
with terrorists like the Haqqani network and al Qaeda.
Three different committees chaired by Banking Committee
colleagues--Senator Menendez with Senate Foreign Relations, Senator
Warner with Senate Intelligence, and Senator Reed with Armed Services--
have begun thorough reviews, including a series of hearings which will
assess the many decisions, including mistakes made along the way by
subsequent Administrations, and possibly by Congress, over 20 years in
Afghanistan.
What is abundantly clear is that before we send our servicemembers
into another conflict, we must make sure that military engagement is
truly a last resort, and that we know how we will extricate ourselves
from military conflicts before we get ourselves into them.
Today, the focus of this hearing is to look forward--to envision
what we can do to address the urgent economic and humanitarian crisis
facing the country in the wake of the Taliban takeover, and to assess
the role of economic and financial sanctions and other counterterrorism
tools against the Taliban, tools within this Committee's jurisdiction.
With as much as 30 percent unemployment, a brain drain of its most
capable young people, enduring deep poverty, an ongoing drought, the
Covid crisis, and the collapse of Afghanistan's economy looming, the
people of Afghanistan need help.
We must consider how the United States can maintain the flow of
humanitarian assistance and family remittances, while ensuring that aid
does not fall into the wrong hands.
This aid has been a lifeline to the people of Afghanistan. Millions
rely on it. It must continue, even while we deny access to funds to
terrorist actors like the Taliban, al Qaeda, and the Haqqani network.
As we will hear today, that is no small task--but it is essential.
The lives and livelihoods of millions of Afghans may depend on it. We
owe them that much.
And we must do this while protecting the security of Americans and
preventing Afghanistan from once again emerging as a terrorist safe
haven.
The Administration has made clear the Taliban should be judged by
their actions over time, and that any decisions regarding diplomatic
recognition or the release of billions in frozen Afghan Government
reserves is far off. They have a clear-eyed realism about who the
Taliban are, while at the same time recognizing, along with our allies,
that they control the Government and thus we must engage them, and when
necessary, hold them accountable for abuses.
If the last month is any indication, the Taliban are not moderating
their positions.
They have appointed brutal old guard Taliban members to serve in
the interim Government, including the leader of the terrorist Haqqani
network as Minister of the Interior.
They have threatened, harassed, and attacked women and girls who
were demonstrating to retain their hard-fought freedoms. They closed
Kabul's premier university to women faculty and students. They
converted the former Ministry of Women's Affairs into the old,
notorious Ministry of Vice and Virtue--a pretty grotesque irony.
They have harassed, beaten, and killed journalists and members of
other ethnic groups, they started a return to grisly public executions
of alleged lawbreakers, and threatened a return to public amputations.
The situation grows more dire each day. We must get to work.
We know that China, Russia, and other countries that do not share
our values are already engaging in Afghanistan--and they have few
qualms about funds falling into the wrong hands.
It's up to us to show the Afghan people, and people around the
world, that the U.S. will continue to be a beacon of hope and a source
of humanitarian relief.
I am eager to hear today from our four witnesses, who will share
their unique perspectives with us. We welcome you all to the Committee,
in person and remotely, and look forward to your testimony.
______
PREPARED STATEMENT OF SENATOR PATRICK J. TOOMEY
Mr. Chairman, thank you.
Last month, we all watched in horror as chaos unfolded at Kabul's
airport. This Administration's flawed decisions resulted in an utterly
catastrophic evacuation from Afghanistan. Responsibility for this
withdrawal--notwithstanding our severely flawed negotiations with the
Taliban under the previous Administration--lies with President Biden.
To be clear, I felt at the time and still believe that it was wrong
for the previous Administration to negotiate with the Taliban to the
exclusion of the legitimately elected Afghan Government, and to agree
to a full withdrawal of U.S. troops. However, at least that agreement
was conditioned on the Taliban fulfilling certain political
commitments, including achieving a ``permanent and comprehensive
ceasefire,'' and agreeing upon a ``political roadmap'' for
Afghanistan's future. Since it's universally acknowledged that the
Taliban failed to live up to these conditions, the Biden administration
could have chosen a different path and adjusted their withdrawal plan
without even having violated the prior agreement. Tragically, they did
not.
We know from recent congressional testimony that President Biden
ignored the counsel of DOD officials to keep a military presence in the
country longer. We also know from recent media reporting that the DOD
urged the Administration to begin the evacuation of Americans months
earlier. Had the President listened to this advice, America could've
ended-not continued, as the President claims, but responsibly ended--
our involvement in this war on our own terms. Instead, the terms of our
chaotic exit were set by the Taliban, a terrorist group we've been at
war with for 20 years.
Amazingly, the Administration entrusted the ``safe passage'' of
Americans, green card holders, and vulnerable Afghans to evacuate the
country to the Taliban, and did not publicly question or challenge the
Taliban's threats that we depart by August 31st. So it's no wonder
that, contrary to President Biden's assertion that the U.S. would stay
until every American was able to leave, hundreds of American citizens
and legal permanent residents were left behind--including
Pennsylvanians.
One such Pennsylvanian American citizen, a mother of four, works at
a middle school in the Lehigh Valley. During the evacuation operations
in Kabul, she repeatedly tried and failed to make it to the airport.
Once she was teargassed. Another time she nearly had her passport
seized by a Taliban militant. She was just blocks away when the suicide
attack at the airport killed 13 U.S. servicemembers and nearly 200
Afghans.
The only way she escaped Afghanistan was because a veterans' group
operating on the ground found her, protected her, and got her on a
flight on September 10th. It's unbelievable to me that a group of
Americans--civilians--had to save this woman's life because her own
Government abandoned her. And now, as a direct result of the
humiliating unnecessary surrender in Afghanistan, a massive
humanitarian disaster appears likely to descend on the Afghan people.
Today, thousands of Americans, green card holders, and Afghan
special immigrant visa applicants, who aided the U.S. military, and
their families are still trying to escape this disaster. And, of
course, the Afghan people, including vulnerable women, girls, and
minorities now face violence, systematic repression, and the denial of
their basic rights under Taliban rule--something they have not known
for two decades.
The Biden administration has said repeatedly that the Taliban must
cut ties with terrorist groups, ensure the rights of women and girls,
conduct no revenge killings against our Afghan partners, and allow
Americans, green card holders, and SIVs and their families to leave the
country freely.
As we will hear today, the Taliban is failing on all of these
fronts. They are a brutal, murderous, terrorist group intertwined with
al Qaeda. And yet, the Administration's current posture seems based on
the naive hope that the Taliban will reform itself now that they have
taken power.
The Administration may feel pressured to provide sanctions relief
to the Taliban to address the acute humanitarian crisis emerging in
Afghanistan. But bestowing international legitimacy on the Taliban and
allowing them access to $7.5 billion dollars at the New York Fed would
be a grave mistake. We should be exploring ways to help the Afghan
people without empowering the Taliban.
Today we will consider critical issues that will determine whether
and how the Administration will engage with the Taliban, including the
status of sanctions on the Taliban, which is a Specially Designated
Global Terrorist organization, now that it controls Afghanistan; the
interconnectedness of al Qaeda and the Haqqani Network with the Taliban
and any new sanctions that should be imposed on these groups; the acute
risk of Afghanistan becoming an epicenter of money laundering and
terrorist financing; Treasury's policies permitting humanitarian aid to
continue flowing to the Afghan people; the current and future status of
the $7.5 billion in Afghan foreign reserves kept at the New York Fed;
and Afghanistan's $500 million in Special Drawing Rights held at the
IMF.
I look forward to hearing from today's witnesses about these
issues.
______
PREPARED STATEMENT OF ADAM M. SMITH
Partner, Gibson Dunn and Crutcher, Former Treasury Department Senior
Advisor and Former Director, Multilateral Affairs, National Security
Council
October 5, 2021
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
PREPARED STATEMENT OF NAHEED FARID
Member of Parliament (The Wolesi Jirga), Afghanistan
October 5, 2021
Thank you to the Committee for inviting me to speak today. Chairman
Brown, Ranking Member Toomey, Members of the Committee, my name is
Naheed Farid. I am a member of Parliament from Afghanistan representing
the people of Herat, which is my hometown. I have served in Parliament
for more than 11 years and since 2019 I have been the Chairperson of
the Human Rights Civil Society and Women's Affairs Committee. Here in
Washington, DC, I serve on the advisory board of the Afghanistan-U.S.
Democratic Peace and Prosperity Council.
I appear before you today still in shock that the Taliban, the
Haqqani Network, and al Qaeda have taken over Afghanistan. For years my
family and I have faced death threats from the Taliban. I cannot count
how many friends and colleagues I have lost to Taliban violence and
targeted assassinations. A week before they took Kabul, the Taliban
entered Herat, found my house, searched for my family. Luckily, my
family and I were able to escape with just the clothes on our backs. We
fled to safety and now I'm among thousands of displaced women, who left
our lives behind, not knowing if and when we will ever return.
For Afghan women of my generation, we remember the Taliban from the
1990s. Their sudden takeover of the country brings back so many
nightmares. When I was a girl growing up in Herat, I loved going to
school and I dreamed of one day becoming a pilot. When the Taliban took
control, they closed my school, and I was forced to spend most of my
time at home with female relatives.
Today what we as Afghan women have known all along is clear for the
world to see. The Taliban cannot be trusted. They are rolling back all
of the gains of the past 20 years and reinstituting their draconian
rules. Afghan women and girls face a return to the 1990s. The Taliban
have stripped most women of the ability to work, girls cannot attend
secondary schools, young women who grew up in a free and open society
are now living in fear.
Make no mistake, the Taliban govern through fear. Their soldiers
indiscriminately whip civilians in the street. They have resumed public
executions and mutilations. They have committed forced displacements
and atrocities against Tajiks and Hazaras in Panjshir, Daikundi and
other places. They have curbed free speech and decimated Afghanistan's
once-thriving media sector. The Haqqani Network, al Qaeda, and other
dangerous terrorist groups now operate freely in Afghanistan and have
significant control within the Taliban leadership.
So how can Congress help the Afghan people? I have had so many
meetings with Members of Congress these past few years and I know that
so many of you feel a deep bond with the Afghan people and especially
with Afghan women. What the Afghan people need right now are three
things: immediate humanitarian assistance, legislation that prohibits
U.S. recognition and normalization of relations with the Taliban, and
support for local NGO's and civil society who can deliver basic
services in the absence of a normal Government.
Afghanistan faces a dire humanitarian crisis. The health care
system, which was reliant on direct payments from international donors,
is on the brink of collapse. There are millions of Internally Displaced
Persons unable to return to their homes. More than half of the
population faces food insecurity. Without outside assistance more
Afghans will suffer and die. But, the Taliban cannot be allowed to set
terms and conditions on how this humanitarian assistance is delivered
and who it is delivered to. Humanitarian corridors need to be
established where international and local NGOs can do their work
without any interference from the Taliban.
The Taliban regime cannot be trusted. Because of their hardline
beliefs and their partnership with dangerous terrorist groups, the
Taliban pose an imminent threat to the region and the world. No U.S.
Administration or U.S. allies should recognize the Taliban regime, nor
should they normalize relations unless and until the Taliban purge
their ranks of known terrorists and deliver a pluralistic political
system that provides equality to all Afghans. I urge the Members of
this Committee to support legislation preventing Taliban recognition.
There are two different pieces of legislation that have already been
introduced in Congress--the Taliban Recognition Prevention Act in the
House, and the Afghanistan Counterterrorism, Oversight and
Accountability Act in the Senate. I urge you to act quickly and in a
bipartisan way to pass legislation to this effect.
Not only can't the Taliban regime be trusted, it also has minimal
capacity for governance. Very few of the technocrats that remain in the
country are willing to resume their jobs at the various ministries. We
are witnessing the breakdown in basic services such as health care,
education, banking and finance, aviation, and many others. The U.S.
should not provide the Taliban with capacity building support. Instead
the U.S. should provide direct support to Afghan NGOs and civil
society. As someone with a background in nonprofit management and a
family foundation that has built many schools for girls throughout
Afghanistan, I know firsthand just how valuable local NGOs are to so
many ordinary Afghans, especially to women and girls. The U.S.
Government must find ways to provide funding, capacity building, and
support to these local organizations who are on the ground helping
Afghans.
A free and democratic Afghanistan that I committed my life to
build, the Afghanistan that me and my generation, and the Gen Z'ers
that followed us, love, and cherish, that Afghanistan still exists. It
exists in the pulse of our cities, in our green landscapes and in our
rugged terrain. A free and democratic Afghanistan exists in our hearts
and our minds. We will reclaim this dream that the Taliban took away
from us. We will fight them, on all levels, until they give us our
freedom back. I just hope that our allies in the U.S. Congress, those
whose ideals we embraced and whose encouragement we accepted at face
value, continue to stand with us during this, our greatest time of need
and show the world once again that it can lead and be a force for
positive change.
Thank you!
______
PREPARED STATEMENT OF SUE ECKERT
Senior Associate and Lecturer, Center for Strategic and International
Studies and Jackson Institute for Global Affairs
October 5, 2021
Chairman Brown, Ranking Member Toomey, and distinguished Members of
the Committee, thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today
to discuss the critically important implications of the Taliban's
takeover for U.S. national security, and the future of Afghanistan.
My views are informed by many years seeking to refine economic
tools to promote U.S. national security and foreign policy objectives.
As a staff member of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs overseeing
export controls and economic sanctions, and then in the Executive
branch administering U.S. dual-use export controls, and subsequently in
academia and think tanks, I've worked to realize the potential of
economic and financial measures to promote international peace and
security. My research and efforts to reform these instruments at both
the U.N. and domestic levels entail a better understanding of the
objectives, utility, and limitations of such measures (including
unintended consequences), as well as the circumstances when sanctions
are most likely to be effective. While popular discourse continues to
be skeptical of sanctions, I believe economic coercion, carefully
crafted and effectively implemented, remains a critical component of
U.S. national security.
Dire and Deteriorating Humanitarian Situation in Afghanistan
Even before the Taliban took control in August, Afghanistan was
experiencing one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world. After
decades of conflict, the country has been mired in overlapping
humanitarian crises--including the COVID-19 pandemic, climatic changes
and 2021 drought, persistent political insecurities, and increased
violence. The Taliban's return to power--and the ensuing political
instability--compounded these challenges. Responding to the severe and
worsening humanitarian situation, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio
Guterres launched an urgent flash appeal on September 13 for $606
million in additional funding, emphasizing the urgent need to ensure
that the international community's humanitarian response ``saves lives
but also saves livelihoods.'' \1\ Donors responded by pledging $1.2
billion for the Afghani population.
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\1\ https://www.un.org/sg/en/node/258992
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Over 18.4 million people (or half of Afghani citizens) need
humanitarian assistance, with more than 30 percent of the population
facing emergency or crisis levels of food insecurity; half of all
children under five facing acute malnutrition. \2\ This increase in
food insecurity can be partially attributed to rising food and fuel
prices, disappearing jobs, and the drought-induced destruction of 40
percent of the country's wheat crop. In the first half of 2021, there
were 5,183 civilian casualties and injuries, with a sharp increase
between May and June following the withdrawal of international military
forces and an uptick in fighting; more than 4 in every 10 civilian
casualties were women and children. Additionally, at least 570,000
individuals have fled from conflict in 2021, while a record 757,000
Afghans were deported or returned from neighboring countries between
January and August, despite suboptimal return conditions. \3\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\2\ OCHA's Flash Appeal: Snapshot of Immediate Humanitarian
Response Needs (Sept-Dec 2021) https://www.humanitarianresponse.info/
en/operations/afghanistan/document/flash-appeal-snapshot-immediate-
humanitarian-response-needs-sept-%E2%80%93.
\3\ CSIS, ``U.S. Sanctions Squeeze Humanitarian Assistance in
Afghanistan'', https://www.csis.org/analysis/us-sanctions-squeeze-
humanitarian-assistance-afghanistan.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
According to the United Nations Development Programme's most recent
assessment, Afghanistan is heading toward universal poverty. As much as
97 percent of the population is at risk of falling below the poverty
line by mid-2022--compared to the current poverty rate of 72 percent--
unless the country's political and economic crises are curtailed. The
ramifications of the Taliban's takeover are accelerating these crises,
particularly due to frozen foreign reserves, long-standing sanctions
against the Taliban, collapsing public finances, and increasing
pressure on the banking system.
On October 3rd, the European Union's foreign policy chief Josep
Borrell, warned that Afghanistan is facing a collapse of its economic
and social systems that risks turning into a humanitarian catastrophe,
which is dangerous not only for Afghans, but for the region and
international security as well. Since the Taliban took power in August,
food prices have jumped more than 50 percent as the freezing of $9
billion of Afghanistan's assets held in foreign central bank reserves
and the withdrawal of foreign income stokes inflation. The Afghan
banking system is largely paralyzed, with people unable to withdraw
money, while the country's health system--which was heavily dependent
on foreign aid--is close to collapse. \4\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\4\ ``Afghanistan on Verge of Socio-Economic Collapse, EU's Top
Diplomat Says'', Reuters. https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/
afghanistan-verge-socio-economic-collapse-eus-top-diplomat-says-2021-
10-03/
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The World Food Program (WFP)'s Situation Update in late September
reported that food security is deteriorating rapidly with only 5
percent of households consuming adequate levels of food. \5\ WFP
Executive Director and Former U.S. Congressman David Beasley pleaded,
``The time is now, we cannot wait 6 months--we need the funds
immediately so we can move the supplies, to pre-position before the
winter sets in.'' \6\ WFP noted that the situation is also dire among
the middle classes, who used to be able to feed their families every
day: three out of four households now limit portion sizes; adults are
eating less so their children can eat more.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\5\ World Food Program Situation Report, 30 September 2021,
https://reliefweb.int/report/afghanistan/wfp-afghanistan-situation-
report-30-september-2021.
\6\ ``Afghanistan: The Time To Act Is Now'', https://www.wfp.org/
stories/afghanistan-time-act-now.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Moreover, the World Health Organization (WHO) last week warned of a
deteriorating health situation in Afghanistan, with decreasing access
to health care for the Afghan population. There are more cases of
measles and diarrhea, and less response to the pandemic, as well as a
resurgence of polio. According to WHO, only 17 per cent of the over
2,300 health facilities previously supported by the World Bank are
fully functional. Two thirds of these health facilities have run out of
essential medicines. \7\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\7\ Alexander Matheou, Asia Pacific director of the International
Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, said at a news
conference on September 30. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/30/world/
asia/afghanistan-aid.html
We are deeply concerned that Afghanistan faces imminent
collapse of health services and worsening hunger if aid and
money do not flow into the country within weeks. There needs to
be some solution to the financial flows into Afghanistan to
ensure that at least salaries can be paid, and that essential
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
supplies--power and water being two of them--can be procured.
Fears about a surge in deaths from basic medical ailments have
ballooned, as more than 20,000 health workers are out of work, either
because the facilities closed, or their salaries were frozen.
U.N. Emergency Relief Coordinator Martin Griffiths on September 22
released $45 million in life-saving support from the U.N. Central
Emergency Response Fund to help prevent Afghanistan's health care
system from collapse, noting, ``Allowing Afghanistan's health care
delivery system to fall apart would be disastrous. People across the
country would be denied access to primary health care such as emergency
caesarean sections and trauma care.'' \8\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\8\ ``Afghanistan: ERC Griffiths Releases $45M From U.N. CERF for
Life-Saving Support'', https://www.unocha.org/story/afghanistan-erc-
griffiths-releases-45m-un-cerf-life-saving-support.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Beyond official U.N. and EU agencies stressing the critical nature
of the situation in Afghanistan, leading humanitarian organizations
have also issued stark assessments. Jan Egeland, Secretary-General of
the Norwegian Refugee Council, and former U.N. Undersecretary-General
for Humanitarian Affairs, visited Afghanistan last week, reporting
that,
Afghanistan's economy is spiraling out of control. The formal
banking system could collapse any day now because of a lack of
cash. I've spoken to families who tell me they are surviving on
tea and small scraps of old bread. If the economy collapses,
even the most basic services will no longer function, and
humanitarian needs will soar even higher. Dealing with the
liquidity crisis is critical as aid organizations seek to scale
up to meet urgent humanitarian needs. U.N. member States must
urgently broker a multilateral agreement to stabilize the
economy, fund appropriate public services and address the
liquidity crisis. \9\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\9\ ``Afghanistan Is on a Countdown to Economic Collapse'',
https://www.nrc.no/news/2021/september/afghanistan-is-on-a-countdown-
to-economic-collapse/.
After visiting Afghanistan last month, Peter Maurer, head of the
International Committee of the Red Cross, warned of ``conditional
humanitarianism.'' Humanitarian action should not be conditioned on
political, human rights, or other stipulations, as it weakens respect
for IHL and humanitarian actors. And it erodes principles of neutral,
independent, and impartial humanitarian action. \10\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\10\ ``High Level Ministerial Meeting on the Humanitarian
Situation in Afghanistan'', https://www.icrc.org/en/document/president-
maurer-meeting-humanitarian-situation.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ensuring that assistance reaches the Afghan population is not just
a moral and legal imperative, but one which also advances U.S. security
interests. The risk of massive flows of refugees destabilizing the
region and creating an environment conducive to the spread of terrorism
is real. Continuation of humanitarian support and programs in
Afghanistan, as well as efforts to stabilize the economic and financial
system (minimizing the Taliban's benefit and maximizing the public's
benefit) is the international community's best chance to avoid an
economic and humanitarian catastrophe. \11\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\11\ ``William Byrd on Afghanistan's Economic Crisis'', https://
www.usip.org/publications/2021/09/william-byrd-afghanistans-economic-
crisis.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Complications of Sanctions for Humanitarian Responses
Preexisting sanctions by the United States and the United Nations
make an already challenging operational environment for humanitarian
actors in Afghanistan even more complicated.
Following the bombings of U.S. Embassies in East Africa in 1998,
the United Nations Security Council imposed sanctions on the Taliban.
Initially under UNSCR 1267 and in 2011, as part of a new sanctions
regime pursuant to UNSCR 1988, all member States must prohibit any
``funds, financial assets, and economic resources'' from being provided
to designated parties. In this regard, the U.N. 1988 regime targets
individual members of the Taliban (but not the entity of the Taliban),
currently consisting of 135 individuals plus five entities (the Haqqani
network and four hawaladars). Of note, the majority (19) of the acting
Taliban officials announced in September are sanctioned by the U.N.,
with at least 4 members of the Haqqani Network currently in charge of
Afghan ministries (Interior, Telecommunications, Higher Education and
Refugees). \12\ In addition to 1988 sanctions, the U.N. also sanctions
al Qaeda and ISIL (UNSCR 1267/2253) which includes 12 individuals and
20 entities affiliated with al Qaeda operating within Afghanistan.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\12\ ``Afghanistan's U.N. Rep Slams Taliban's New Govt: 17 of 33
Ministers Sanctioned by U.N.'', https://www.republicworld.com/world-
news/rest-of-the-world-news/afghanistans-un-rep-slams-talibans-new-
govt-17-of-33-ministers-sanctioned-by-un.html.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
In the U.S., the Taliban as an entity is designated as a Specially
Designated Global Terrorists (SDGT) under E.O. 13224; the Haqqani
Network is also a SDGT, as well as being designated as a Foreign
Terrorist Organization (FTO) under section 219 of the Immigration and
Nationality Act. Thus, the U.S. sanctions both leaders of the Taliban
group as individuals, but also sanctions the Taliban as an entity.
While these sanctions do not prohibit U.S. persons from exporting or
reexporting goods or services into Afghanistan, the lack of clarity
regarding precisely whom the Taliban is has created concern among NGOs.
U.S. persons (and others given U.S. secondary sanctions) are prohibited
from any dealings with the Taliban, at the risk of potential civil and
criminal penalties.
First, significant uncertainty over how to treat the Taliban as a
sanctioned entity now that they are the de facto Government of
Afghanistan exists . . . do sanctions apply to self-identified members
of the Taliban or to the totality of the Afghan Government? Given that
principled humanitarian assistance requires engagement with all parties
to a conflict to secure access to the civilian population, the answer
to this question has serious implications for humanitarian and civil
society organizations, as well as financial institutions providing
banking services to NGOs. The fact that that majority of acting Taliban
officials are on U.N. or U.S. sanctions lists adds to the confusion as
to whether entire ministries led by these individuals are also subject
to sanctions. Payments of partnership money to ministries for joint
implementation of civil society programs benefiting the populations are
on hold until questions as to how ministries led by designated
individuals should be treated are clarified. Further complicating the
situation, countries implement sanctions differently, with the European
Union and the United Kingdom closely aligning with U.N. sanctions,
while the United States is more expansive in its scope.
In light of outstanding questions regarding who is sanctioned, it
is not surprising that financial institutions are being cautious, with
many suspending transactions related to Afghanistan and even a few
``derisking'' NGOs operating in Afghanistan. \13\ Concerns over
reputational harm, potentially invasive audits by regulators, and the
possibility of civil and criminal penalties should a transaction
inadvertently involve the Taliban are pushing banks to avoid these
risks instead of managing them. The chilling effect leads to
disruptions of financial services and forces NGOs to scale back
operations due to a lack of financial access and even altered programs
(some NGOs have referred to programmatic decisions being made based on
where banks will transfer funds, rather than purely on need)--with
meaningful effects on civilians who rely on these services.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\13\ Derisking entails denying or delaying financial access or the
transfer of funds to humanitarian agencies out of concern of running
afoul of regulatory requirements (i.e., sanctions, anti-money
laundering, and countering the financing of terrorism). See ``Financial
Access for U.S. Nonprofits''. February 2017. https://
www.charityandsecurity.org/system/files/Financial
AccessFullReport-2.21%20(2).pdf
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Finally, there is a lack of clarity over the scope and scale of
authorizations provided. On 24 September, Treasury's Office of Foreign
Assets Control (OFAC) issued two new general licenses (GL 14 and 15)
along with four FAQs, authorizing humanitarian assistance or other
activities that support basic human needs to Afghanistan. These actions
and guidance were welcomed and extremely helpful to many NGOs, and the
Biden administration is to be commended for taking these important
steps.
However, the scope of activities covered by the new GL
authorizations is narrower than in other recent OFAC actions, raising
questions as to how the range of civil society programs and services
benefiting ordinary Afghans which the international community has
supported for the past 20 years are to be treated. \14\ General
Licenses issued by OFAC in 2021 for Yemen, Burma, and in September
Ethiopia (and previously as applied to Venezuela), have included a
broad range of authorized humanitarian and civil society programs.
These routinely include:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\14\ ``Treasury Issues General Licenses and Guidance To Facilitate
Humanitarian Assistance in Afghanistan'', https://home.treasury.gov/
news/press-releases/jy0372.
1. Activities to support humanitarian projects to meet basic human
needs, including drought and flood relief, the provision of
health services, assistance for vulnerable populations
including individuals with disabilities and the elderly,
environmental programs, and food, nutrition, and medicine
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
distribution.
2. Activities to support democracy building, including activities to
support rule of law, citizen participation, Government
accountability, universal human rights and fundamental
freedoms, access to information, and civil society development
projects;
3. Activities to support education, including combating illiteracy,
increasing access to education, international exchanges, and
assisting education reform projects;
4. Activities to support noncommercial development projects directly
benefiting the people of the sanctioned country, including
preventing infectious disease and promoting maternal/child
health, sustainable agriculture, and clean water assistance;
and
5. Activities to support environmental protection, including the
preservation and protection of threatened or endangered species
and the remediation of pollution or other environmental damage.
\15\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\15\ Language contained in Yemen, Burma, and Ethiopia General
Licenses.
In the case of GL 14 and 15 for Afghanistan, however, the scope of
authorized activities is much narrower and limited to transactions,
``that are ordinarily incident and necessary to the exportation or
reexportation of agricultural commodities, medicine, medical devices,
replacement parts and components for medical devices, or software
updates for medical devices to Afghanistan, or to persons in third
countries purchasing specifically for resale to Afghanistan. \16\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\16\ See GL 14 and FAQ 928.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
While broad agreement exists that no support should be provided to
the Taliban, NGOs have significant concerns as to whether and how other
assistance activities will be permitted to continue. According to
reports of the Special Inspector General for the Reconstruction of
Afghanistan (SIGAR), the U.S. has spent $145 billion rebuilding
Afghanistan in the past 20 years--with billions going to USAID's long
term development programming. Many NGOs are looking for clarity and
confirmation that that USAID's basic development sectors of
agriculture, education, democracy and governance, health, and economic
growth among others, would be authorized under a GL and permitted to
continue. Programs beyond basic human needs to promote education,
governance, human rights and protection, and peacebuilding are vital to
preserve and build upon gains made by and for the Afghan population
during the last two decades.
Other Challenges Faced by NGOs
Aside from ongoing uncertainty as to permitted transactions, NGOs'
most significant problem in getting assistance into Afghanistan relates
to the limitations in moving cash into Afghanistan. The U.S.' freezing
of foreign reserves and suspension of international assistance through
the World Bank and IMF have resulted in a shortage of cash (USD and
AFN) and severe liquidity crises affecting NGO operations.
Without access to its foreign reserves, the Central Bank (DAB) has
set limits on a range of financial activities, including cash
withdrawals for individuals and corporate payments between banks, and
unavailability of corporate banking services. Without the ability to
import USD notes, the scarcity of cash will continue: NGOs report that
the cash flow crises in Afghanistan is getting worse with every passing
day: people waiting on line for hours to withdraw limited funds and
banks are running out of cash, asking individuals to register and wait
until they get physical cash with some staff waiting more than 3 weeks.
Foreign remittances are blocked, and the banking system is barely able
to operate. With such a scarcity of cash, NGOs are not able to pay
suppliers, contractors, vendors, and most importantly national staff.
Everybody wants to be paid either by cash or outside of country which
refers to another layer of difficulties in terms legality, due
diligence, compliance as well as security issues linked to physical
handling of cash.
Moreover, devaluation of AFN currency and high inflation are making
it more difficult to maintain financial frameworks for NGO operations;
several fear that the collapse of the banking sector if the Government
continues to be unable to access Government accounts held externally
(which remains explicitly prohibited in OFAC GL14). Informal methods of
moving money have also proven to be inadequate. While hawalas are an
option for cash transfer, they are not generally a reliable one.
Problems associated with screening hawalas, high fees, and the fact
that hawalas will not have enough cash to meet NGO needs (some NGOs
estimates that the sector needs as much as $3 million USD/day) limit
the utility of such methods.
Recommendations To Address Humanitarian Challenges in Afghanistan
The Biden administration has been supportive of NGOs continuing to
provide their essential assistance in Afghanistan, and the September
OFAC GLs represent important steps in clarifying permissible NGO
activities. Additional action is needed, however, in the near term to
avert a humanitarian catastrophe. As in past cases of severe
humanitarian need (such as 2010-11 famine in Somalia, or in response to
the natural disasters), the U.S. should be forward-leaning and provide
broad grants of authority and legal certainty to NGOs, as well as the
financial institutions providing services to support these activities.
This should happen in several ways.
First, OFAC should continue to broaden and clarify the scope of
authorized activities for Afghanistan. Additional GLs authorizing other
NGO programs, including ongoing development programs that benefit the
Afghan population, not the Taliban, should be issued as the most
expeditious way to ensure civilians continue to receive vital
assistance.
Important NGO programs providing services to Afghan citizens in the
areas of protection and prevention (such as atrocities prevention,
protection of human rights defenders, protection of religious and
ethnic minorities or early warning and response systems and rights-
based education initiatives), women's rights (addressing women's
economic empowerment, support to women-led civil society, prevention of
gender-based violence, etc.) and conflict and stabilization (such as
community-level dialogue, conflict prevention, mediation, conflict
resolution, and violence prevention at the local level) should be
continued and authorized through general licenses.
Second, the United States should clarify to whom the sanctions
apply. Is the Taliban deemed to have an interest in the Government of
Afghanistan and, if so, whether the Afghanistan Government's assets are
blocked and transactions with it are prohibited? Since the Taliban is
the de facto Government, do sanctions apply broadly to the entirety of
the Government, or just the designated ministers? And if a minister is
sanctioned, does that mean any dealings with their ministry are
prohibited? Further clarifications and legal protection are necessary
for payments to be processed in support of these programs. In addition
to GLs, providing NGOs and financial institutions with official
assurance codifying OFAC's no enforcement policy that inadvertent
violations will not be the basis of enforcement actions if due
diligence is exercised, could go a long way toward mitigating risk
aversion.
Third, because it is likely to be months before the Afghan
financial system stabilizes with international payments in support of
humanitarian and civil society NGOs being regularized, the U.S.,
together with international partners, financial institutions, and NGOs,
need to develop a safe and reliable system to move humanitarian funds
into Afghanistan. A viable mechanism to support these important
programs in a way that does not benefit the Taliban but ensures
necessary funds, goods, and services are able to be transferred into
the country with appropriate protections is necessary to forestall a
widespread humanitarian and economic collapse.
Fourth, the U.S. needs to work within the Security Council to
create safeguards to ensure humanitarian action can continue in
Afghanistan. Clear guidance is needed, not only from national
regulatory authorities, but also from the 1988 Taliban sanctions
committee to clarify that sanctions are not intended to impede
humanitarian action, and that Member States must refrain from any
measures or restrictions on humanitarian activities carried out by
impartial humanitarian actors--building on UNSCR 2462's requirement
that States must implement sanctions consistent with their obligations
under International Humanitarian Law.
Further, explicit measures to safeguard humanitarian activities and
the provision of essential goods and services in Afghanistan should
authorized through the adoption of an exception. An exception or
``carve-out'' as currently exists in the UNSCR 751 regime regarding
Somalia is needed for transactions and other activities required for
humanitarian activities and for the provision of essential supplies and
services in Afghanistan. The Somalia regime provides a precedent upon
which to build to ensure that all impartial humanitarian organizations'
activities and transactions required to provide essential supplies and
services in Afghanistan can continue.
Fifth, the U.S. needs to work closely with allies to harmonize
policies and regulatory practices, as well as engage with other
countries that have relationships with Afghanistan. Recognizing
national interests of other countries such as Russia, China and
Pakistan vary, all States have common interest in ensuring that
Afghanistan does not become a safe haven for al Qaeda and other
terrorist groups, ensuring regional stability, managing refugee flows,
and preventing a return by the Taliban to violence and practices of the
past concerning women and minorities. Other countries with more
influence on the Taliban, such as Qatar also represent opportunities
for cooperative engagement.
Sixth, the USG needs to engage banks and other financial and money
service providers, insurance and transportation companies, and
exporters to provide assurances that they will not be violating
sanctions by authorizing and facilitating transactions that are
permitted under licenses or a U.N. exception. This includes the
issuance of ``comfort letters'' and other forms of guidance and
encouragement to the private sector as a means of effective risk
sharing among stakeholders.
Long-Term Systemic Reform Is Necessary
While the focus of today's hearing is clearly on the immediate
crises in Afghanistan and finding ways to maintain existing
humanitarian and civil society programs and activities in Afghanistan
that benefit the Afghan people, this crisis brings into sharp relief
the complicated interplay between sanctions and humanitarian action.
Time after time when there are crises in countries subject to
sanctions, the U.S. regulatory system goes through a difficult process
to clarify, define, and except humanitarian action. Just this year,
we've been faced with the threat of withholding humanitarian assistance
in Yemen (following the designation of Ansarallah in January 2021),
Burma, Ethiopia, and Afghanistan. There is a need for systemic reform
to create standing carve-outs for humanitarian action.
In fact, when Congress passed the International Emergency Economic
Powers Act, \17\ the foundational authority for Treasury's financial
sanctions, it included Section 203(b) a humanitarian exemption. Since
9/11, however, most terrorism-related Executive orders issued under
IEEPA automatically waive this exemption without rationale. In doing
so, humanitarian aid is treated as prohibited transactions with
designated terrorist organizations, affecting everything from
negotiating access to civilians to coordinated rescues during
earthquakes and floods. \18\ It's time to restore the Congressionally
mandated humanitarian exception and reform the financial sanctions
framework so general licenses do not have to be created each time.
Humanitarian exceptions should also be routinely included in U.N.
Security Council sanctions as well.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\17\ Public Law 95-223, 28 December 1977. ``(2) donations, by
persons subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, of articles,
such as food, clothing, and medicine, intended to be used to relieve
human suffering, except to the extent that the President determines
that such donations (A) would seriously impair his ability to deal with
any national emergency declared under section 202 of this title.''
\18\ Charity & Security Network, ``Proposals for New Congress and
Biden-Harris Administration To Support and Facilitate Humanitarian and
Peacebuilding Operations Through Nongovernmental Organizations'',
https://charityandsecurity.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/CSN-
Transition-Memo-V4.pdf.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Distinguished Members of the Committee, significant U.S. security
and foreign policy interests are at stake with the Taliban's recontrol
of Afghanistan. A serious assessment of the past two decades of U.S.
policy is certainly in order as we seek to learn from this tragic
experience. As the U.S. respond to the many challenges in Afghanistan,
it's important that sanctions do not further compound the humanitarian
crisis evolving on the ground in which real people are suffering. The
U.S. and the international community maintain valuable leverage to
influence the Taliban through frozen reserves and assets, continued
sanctions, and ultimately, recognition. But humanitarian assistance
should not be conditional--it's fundamental to U.S. values and
commitments to protect human rights and international humanitarian law.
``Saving lives and also saving livelihoods'' is the best way of
achieving U.S. objectives to prevent Afghanistan from becoming again a
safe haven for terrorists, precipitating a refugee crisis, and
maintaining regional stability. A humanitarian catastrophe and collapse
of the economy would have devastating consequences for millions of
people and risk destabilizing neighboring countries--an outcome that
serves noone's interests.
The U.S. has invested much in Afghanistan and its' people over the
past 20 years; the U.S. must continue critical assistance programs and
support the broad range of NGOs' activities and access in Afghanistan
through urgent and coordinated action with international partners.
______
PREPARED STATEMENT OF THOMAS JOSCELYN
Senior Fellow, Foundation for Defense of Democracies
October 5, 2021
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
RESPONSES TO WRITTEN QUESTIONS OF CHAIRMAN BROWN
FROM ADAM M. SMITH
Q.1. Some have suggested using U.N. agencies as a conduit to
continue humanitarian, development, and reconstruction aid to
Afghanistan, even though its mission has been hampered by the
need to evacuate many of its staff in the wake of the Taliban
takeover.
If the legal arrangements could be worked out, would U.N.
entities be a viable means--a safe channel--to provide not only
aid from Western Governments directly to the Afghan people,
bypassing the Taliban Government, but also to use at least a
portion of Afghanistan's currency reserves to provide such aid?
How would this likely work, as a practical matter?
A.1. The U.N. agencies--in addition to the Bretton Wood
institutions--could be viable means to leverage in order to
provide aid to the Afghan people. Some agencies, like UNICEF,
already have experience in making direct payments to parties
outside the Taliban's purview (even in areas that have been
under Taliban control even before the formal takeover). U.N.
agencies and multilateral development banks (both the IBRD and
the Asian Development Bank) have significant experience in
working in challenging environments and leveraging both their
good offices and the expertise of their personnel to prioritize
certain forms of aid and strategize for its delivery.
The source of any development funds to be deployed is a
distinct question and should be delinked from the mechanisms of
delivery. It is not clear that domestic foreign currency
reserves can be used without Taliban oversight (assuming that
such funds are housed at the Central Bank which is now run by
the Taliban). Rather, any funds could be provided directly to
the U.N. agencies or others who are vetted by foreign
officials. The Taliban could be informed that any interference
in delivery will lead to the immediate cessation of such funds.
Alternatively, the international community could focus on in-
kind aid in the immediate term, rather than cash transfers.
Q.2. Since the Taliban takeover in August, daily and weekly
limits have reportedly been placed on bank withdrawals, due to
currency shortages in-country. This has forced an even greater
reliance on the Hawala system, which most Afghans use--but that
system is also reportedly strained.
What do you think U.S. and other Western Governments should
be doing now to ease the economic strain on ordinary Afghan
families caused by currency shortages--besides allowing an
expansion of personal and family remittances through entities
like Western Union and Money Gram, now restored after being
briefly cut off, to flow into Afghanistan?
A.2. In the immediate term the United States and other Western
Governments should work on the mass expansion of in-kind aid
delivery (rather than cash payments). With winter quickly upon
Afghanistan the need for heating, clothes, blankets, food, and
medicine are critical if the international community seeks to
arrest a near-certain humanitarian emergency. The importance of
in-kind deliveries comes not just because of the absence of
such goods in the Afghan market, but the reality that it is
very difficult to get money into the country even if goods
existed to buy. The U.N.'s Office for the Coordination of
Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reports that 89 percent of NGOs are
unable to bring any money (of whatever currency) into the
country.
In addition to in-kind aid, the international community
must urgently clarify how to interpret the scope of both U.S.
sanctions on the Taliban, and U.N. Security Council Resolution
1988. The international aid community has interpreted both U.S.
and U.N. sanctions to extend not only to named individuals or
entities, but also to every person who works with or on behalf
of an agency that is run by a listed person. For example, this
has meant that line workers providing key services on behalf of
the Ministry of the Interior are being denied payments by the
international community because their ministry is being run by
a sanctioned individual. That aggressive interpretation has
never been employed in other sanctions programs--and the
international community must act quickly to publicize and
clarify that that is not the case here.
Q.3. Since just after 9/11, the Taliban has been a Specially
Designated Global Terrorist organization, and its leaders and
many of its members have been designated separately as well.
Entities or individuals listed under that authority are
effectively blacklisted from the U.S. financial system, and
from the global financial system because the restrictions apply
with respect to U.S. persons, U.S. banks, or transactions that
might traverse the United States, including most U.S. dollar
trade around the world.
Can you discuss the legal implications of that designation
and what it means for organizations operating in Afghanistan?
What if anything more should Treasury do to clarify its
enforcement policy for aid organizations working in the region,
to enable them to continue to operate effectively?
A.3. The U.S. Treasury's sanctions system--operated principally
by the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC)--is enormously
successful in restricting the ability of named parties to
access the global, formal financial system. As a legal matter,
individuals or entities named as Specially Designated Global
Terrorists appear on the Specially Designated Nationals and
Blocked Persons List (the ``SDN List'') and any property they
own that is in U.S. jurisdiction (or that comes into U.S.
jurisdiction) is frozen. Additionally, any entity that is owned
50 percent or more by a listed party is itself blocked (even if
that entity does not appear on the SDN List itself). Parties
that continue to deal with sanctioned or blocked persons--or
who are deemed to ``cause'' other parties to deal with such
persons--can face both substantial criminal and civil
consequences.
There are two additional impacts of being listed. First,
because the vast majority of global trade continues to be
conducted in the U.S. Dollar--and most U.S. Dollar transactions
require a financial institution under U.S. jurisdiction to
serve as a correspondent bank--listed parties are essentially
shut out of the global U.S. dollar-based trading system. And,
second, given OFAC's professionalism (all employees at OFAC are
career civil servants--many of whom have devoted their entire
professional careers to the agency), and the ubiquity of the
U.S. Dollar, numerous financial institutions and corporations
throughout the world choose to comply with U.S. sanctions even
if they are not legally obligated to do so. As such, a listed
party can find themselves outside the formal financial system
almost no matter where they work in the world or in what
currency they choose to operate.
The shadow of the SDN List--on which the Taliban, the
Haqqani Network, and numerous related individuals appear--makes
it very challenging and risky for any party to transact with
them. The challenge comes from the fact that counterparty
institutions critical for any work in Afghanistan (financial
intermediaries and providers of logistics and aid) will
potentially be unwilling to play a part for fear of tripping up
their own sanctions compliance obligations. And, second, while
perhaps unlikely, there is a theoretical risk that aid groups
could find themselves sanctioned or enforced against for
providing support to the Taliban and/or the Haqqani Network.
The Executive orders underlying almost all sanctions programs
(including the Specially Designated Global Terrorist program)
include the provision of ``material support'' to listed parties
as a potential basis for designation. Indeed, there have been
several nominally charitable groups that have found themselves
listed and/or enforced against for providing aid to sanctioned
terrorist groups.
Given the impact of even potentially being designated or
enforced against, the U.S. Government needs to lean forward to
provide clarity and comfort with respect to what sorts of
activities with the Taliban and the Haqqani Network are
permitted and what sort of activities will not give rise to
enforcement. On the permission side of the equation, OFAC has
only issued two general licenses. While a good start, they need
to be broader and clearer. They only extend to humanitarian
activity, which is undefined but clearly falls short of
``development'' activities. As the U.N. Secretary General made
clear, saving livelihood is critical to saving lives in
Afghanistan. As such, the U.S. Government should consider the
careful expansion of these licenses to include more than
emergency humanitarian provision.
To provide a sense of what might be needed, in my testimony
I spoke about the designation of the Venezuelan Government. In
that context, in an effort to limit the collateral consequences
on innocent Venezuelans (while restricting the flow of funds to
the regime of Nicolas Maduro) OFAC has issued several dozen
licenses of various sorts to permit a wide of transactions
needed to support the livelihoods (and the future) of
Venezuelan citizens. Similarly, in the context of the
Palestinian Authority, the U.S. has also provided general
licenses. In 2006 when Hamas assumed the majority party within
the Palestinian Legislative Council OFAC provided that U.S.
persons were prohibited from engaging with the Palestinian
Authority unless licensed. OFAC quickly issued several broad
general licenses authorizing transactions with the PA, fees and
tax payments, and transactions undertaken with parts of the PA
in which Hamas was not present.
Every case is different, but both the Venezuela and the PA
situations make clear that two general licenses--limited solely
to the immediate humanitarian needs of the populace--are
insufficient to provide for the Afghan people and to meet U.S.
interests in the country.
With respect to enforcement, OFAC could follow the example
set in the Somalia context and underline that it will not
pursue enforcement actions in cases in which incidental
benefits accrue to the Taliban or the Haqqani Network in the
process of delivery of aid or other services.
Q.4. In your written testimony to the Committee, and in your
oral presentations, you both advocated for expanded use of
OFAC's General Licenses to allow for the delivery of food,
medicine, and related items. For some time, the Taliban have
raised revenue by ``taxing'' or imposing surcharges on the
illegal movement of ordinary goods, like fuel and consumer
imports.
Given our shared desire to facilitate the delivery of
humanitarian and development aid while denying any benefit to
the Taliban or its allies, how would you suggest restructuring
western aid delivery mechanisms to avoid the kind of sanctions
``leakage'' you talked about--including denying the ability of
the Taliban to benefit from the imposition of illegal
surcharges, taxes, or other fees on aid?
A.4. As noted above and in my testimony, there does not appear
to be a way to completely eliminate leakage of aid to the
Taliban and its allies. However, there are ways to reduce the
amount of such leakage. A key way will be to move towards
greater reliance on in-kind aid rather than cash payments. Cash
is difficult to get into the country and the risk of ``taxes''
(or outright theft) of large quantities of hard currency bills
is very high. It is possible for the Taliban to purloin aid
delivery as well but it is harder to do so and harder to
monetize--as a consequence, in-kind aid is more likely to be
received.
A second approach that I know the World Bank and others are
assessing, is to develop an electronic payments system for the
country. Cell phone penetration in Afghanistan is very high and
there are numerous technologies available to roll out cell
phone-based e-payment systems that would allow the delivery of
electronic money to persons directly and then permit them to
purchase goods using their phones. While this technology is
well-tested and used in many parts of the world, the difficulty
in Afghanistan is an absence of trust in the economic system
and the likely desire for participants to cash out of the e-
money system in order to secure hard currency. While such an
electronic payment system is a potentially promising avenue--
especially if the printing of hard currency Afghanis proves
difficult to restart--it is likely a midterm solution rather
than one that can arrest the onset of the immediate crisis.
------
RESPONSES TO WRITTEN QUESTIONS OF SENATOR REED
FROM ADAM M. SMITH
Q.1. What are your thoughts on the best way to structure
sanctions on the Taliban?
A.1. The United States needs to continue sanctioning the
Taliban but needs to do so in a thoughtful and targeted manner.
We need to focus on the right entities and to ensure that
interpretations of the restrictions and exceptions to them are
clear and in line with our policy interests. To that end, OFAC
must clarify the extent of the ``Taliban'' sanctions. It must
provide clarity if the sanctions extend to the work of all
employees of all ministries under Taliban and/or Haqqani
Network control--this is an interpretation that is very
prevalent in the international aid community and is proving to
be a significant hindrance to the delivery of critical
supplies. Additionally, the United States must clarify if the
exemptions also extend to any commercial imports into
Afghanistan that are not purely ``humanitarian'' in nature.
This may require a new set of licenses. If the U.S. Government
does not seek to encourage commerce (in addition to providing
humanitarian support) viable, non-opium-related business will
wither, as will any educational or health care advancements
that were seen during the past two decades. As such, I would
recommend a careful and targeting broadening of the exceptions
to dealings with the Taliban and the Haqqani Network so as to
promote legal commercial activities outside the grasp of
narcotics dealers and terrorists.
Q.2. What is your assessment of how the Trump administration's
unilateral negotiation of the Doha Agreement affected our
ability to work with allies and partners using the nonmilitary
tools of national security making?
A.2. Multilateralism is critical for successful diplomacy in
almost all cases involving complex international problems with
numerous, cross-cutting equities like in Afghanistan. The Trump
administration's highly unilateral approach to dealing with
Afghanistan made it difficult for the United States to gain the
support from and trust of core allies who had been fighting
with us in Afghanistan for decades. The Doha Agreement, which
set up the unilateral departure, removed key partners from the
equation and have made it difficult on a going forward basis to
rely on them to assist in Afghanistan's new chapter. Such
countries' willingness to assist in the aid efforts, in
maintaining strong, nuanced sanctions on the Taliban and the
Haqqani Network, and even engaging with the new Afghanistan
Government is much less more subdued than it would have been if
they had all been consulted and engaged with as partners in the
lead up to the departure.
Q.3. What role do you think our allies and partners should play
in structuring effective sanctions? What should the role of
multilateral institutions be in this process--including the
U.N., the EU, or the G7?
A.3. The multilateralization of sanctions is always preferable.
While the United States benefits due to the role of the U.S.
Dollar and remains the most important sanctions actor
unilaterally, we know from experience that if the European
Union, the United Kingdom, the G7, and even the United Nations,
are able to impose parallel measures the consistency and impact
of sanctions will be greatly improved. In this case the
existence of a U.N. sanctions program (under U.N. Security
Council Resolution 1988) makes it even more important to
achieve international buy in. There is no consistency of
interpretation of Resolution 1988 which has left many aid
groups uncertain as to their ability to provide assistance into
Afghanistan. The U.N. needs to clarify its interpretation of--
and provide needed exceptions to--the Resolution in order to
meet the international community's goals.
I recognize that going forward the Security Council may be
too divided to impose new nuanced sanctions measures. The veto
powers of the P5 may make that impossible. However, as we know
from situations including Yemen and Syria, the United States
has been able to develop sanctions coalitions that allowed a
great deal of coordination of sanctions authorities without the
U.N. imprimatur. The United States develop a ``Friends of''
model in these cases in which the Security Council proved
unable to move forward. I would strongly recommend that the
United States work towards a similar ``like minded'' grouping
to assist the people of Afghanistan.
Q.4. Are there ways to free up currency to the Afghan people
without it flowing through a Taliban Government?
A.4. The importance of cash in the Afghan economy and the
shortage of notes (both hard currency U.S. Dollars and
Afghanis) threatens a major economic collapse. As such, finding
a way to get currency into Afghanistan is critical--and doing
so while limiting any benefit to the Taliban Government equally
so. While different strategies are possible, the one that is
likely the easiest in the short term is to leverage the
structure and professionalism of one of an Afghani private
financial institution to take on the role of the Central Bank
(which is now under the control of the Taliban). A bank such as
AIB--which is likely the most sophisticated, westernized, and
regulation-driven institution in the country--could be up to
the task. AIB could serve the role as depository of hard
currency, as the holder of auctions for the currency, and the
provider of necessary financing and liquidity. However, the
U.S. Government would have to be willing to provide hard
currency to the AIB which is certainly risky. Despite this,
given the dire situation in Afghanistan it might be possible to
convince the Taliban that such an avenue needs to be protected
if the entire country is to be spared from economic calamity.
A medium term approach that the World Bank and others are
considering is to lean into digital payments rather than hard
currency payments. The cell phone penetration in the country is
very high and if the network was developed e-payments from cell
phone to cell phone could end run around both the shortage of
hard currency notes and the Taliban's avariciousness.
------
RESPONSES TO WRITTEN QUESTIONS OF SENATOR SINEMA
FROM ADAM M. SMITH
Q.1. Money laundering and terrorist financing remains a global
threat that is especially pervasive in Nations and regions
immediately after a significant destabilizing event such as a
swift and violent regime change like the one Afghanistan
experienced in August. How do you assess the networks financing
the Taliban following the August takeover? Do you understand
there to be any significant changes to these networks?
A.1. I am not aware of any meaningful changes in these networks
since the August takeover.
Q.2. In recent years, cryptocurrencies and other emerging
decentralized finance products have created new opportunities
for economic development in many communities, including in
Arizona. However, organized crime networks and other bad actors
have also begun to utilize these products to launder money to
support criminal and terrorist operations. What steps can
businesses that facilitate the transfer and use of
cryptocurrencies take to prevent their platforms from being
used for illicit purposes? How can Treasury empower businesses
to take these steps?
A.2. Treasury needs to provide more guidance to the industry
and to do so must balance regulation against the need for
innovation and the reality that regulation will always be
playing catch up with technology. This is an area in which
public-private partnerships, to educate each other and develop
best practices, are critical. Clarity is especially needed at
the point of interface between offline fiat transactions and
cryptocurrencies. Without that clarity it is possible that
either the industry could be needlessly hobbled or could
quickly migrate into areas much more challenging for regulatory
oversight and enforcement.
Q.3. The United Nations reported in June 2021 that the Taliban
reaps hundreds of millions of dollars in income from the poppy
harvest and drug trade, which may continue to be the Taliban
Government's largest source of revenue. Our servicemembers
fought to curtail drug production and worked with the Counter-
Narcotics Police of Afghanistan to limit those illicit
activities. What can we do now to limit opiate production and
prevent those drugs from finding their way to America?
A.3. The lure of opium production as a viable source of hard
currency for an Afghan economy that lacks much else makes the
likelihood of opium returning to the forefront of Government
revenue sources under Taliban leadership very high. As such,
there are only two options. The first, is to promote
eradication of crops which will be difficult now that the
United States has departed. The second, longer-term solution,
is to encourage education and opportunities outside the illegal
drug sector. Focusing on development and the promotion of legal
enterprises, demonstrating the possibility for a livelihood in
other areas, is the only certain way to move the country away
from its dependence.
Q.4. In September 2021, Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets
Control issued two licenses authorizing humanitarian assistance
and exportation of medical devices, pharmaceuticals, and food
and livestock to Afghanistan. These permitted transactions with
the Taliban or Haqqani network. How do you evaluate the
benefits and risks to providing this aid? How can U.S. funding
and resources be most effectively deployed, and with which
Nations, international governing bodies, or nongovernmental
organizations should the U.S. partner to accomplish this?
A.4. The two general licenses are a good start but will likely
be insufficient to provide Afghanistan with what it needs and
to meet U.S. policy interests in the country and the region.
The two licenses are limited to providing humanitarian aid,
excluding assistance for development or education, for example.
In the immediate term the licenses should assist in providing
comfort to encourage aid groups to provide assistance. However,
in the medium term they will not allow aid agencies to provide
for education and development opportunities critical to
establishing a viable state for Afghanis and preventing either
a complete Taliban-ization of the country or a disintegration
of the State. There are risks, of course, to providing any aid
into Afghanistan given the possibility for the Taliban to seize
some of it. However, if the aid is principally in-kind (rather
than cash) and the United States leverages experienced
multilateral actors (like the U.N. agencies, the World Bank,
and other multilateral development banks) the possibility of
leakage to the Taliban reduces substantially.
Q.5. Treasury sanctions relating to Afghanistan are primarily
directed toward the Afghan Taliban and not toward the
Government of Afghanistan. However, the Taliban now controls
the majority of former Afghan Government assets, including Da
Afghanistan Bank (DAB), Afghanistan's central bank. The Federal
Reserve currently holds over $9 billion in frozen assets
belonging to DAB. Do these frozen assets provide the U.S.
Government sufficient leverage to negotiate for more
humanitarian policies as the Taliban moves to govern?
A.5. It does not appear that the Federal Reserve's continued
freezing of the DAB's account provides leverage over the
Taliban. The Taliban would clearly like this money but simply
releasing it would not provide the Afghan economy the necessary
ballast to continue functioning. There are systemic and
systematic concerns in the economy--including the inability to
get currency into the country and the shortages of Afghani
notes (given the cessation of printing)--neither of which would
be ameliorated by the release of these funds. As such, given
both the Taliban's philosophical bent and that the Federal
Reserve funds would not be a panacea, it is not surprising that
the continued hold fails to provide substantial leverage to
encourage the Taliban's behavior.
------
RESPONSES TO WRITTEN QUESTIONS OF CHAIRMAN BROWN
FROM NAHEED FARID
Q.1. The United Nations reported in June 2021 that the Taliban
reaps hundreds of millions of dollars in income from the poppy
harvest and drug trade, which may continue to be the Taliban
Government's largest source of revenue. Our servicemembers
fought to curtail drug production and worked with the Counter-
Narcotics Police of Afghanistan to limit those illicit
activities. What can we do now to limit opiate production and
prevent those drugs from finding their way to America?
A.1. The drug trade is one of the largest sources of income for
the Taliban. As Afghanistan's economy teeters on total
collapse, and the Taliban struggles to pay salaries and
operational costs for its own soldiers, let alone millions of
former Government employees and departments, we are likely to
witness a significant increase in opiate production and
trafficking by the Taliban and its terrorist allies. Outside of
international aid, they simply do not have any other means of
generating large sums of income right now.
Unfortunately, America has limited options available to
stop the Taliban from engaging in the drug trade. It can
monitor and track production and trafficking through drones and
other means. It can urge neighboring countries such as Pakistan
and Iran to intervene and seize shipments. But America cannot
change the Taliban's official policy, dating back 25 years, of
growing and selling drugs. Absent an intervention from U.S.
servicemembers or empowered allied Afghan forces, the Taliban
will not stop its involvement in the drug trade. In the
immediate term, maintaining and enhancing a sanctions regime
that targets Taliban leadership, and all those individuals and
entities that support their illicit drug trade, would be the
most effective course of action.
Q.2. In September 2021, Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets
Control issued two licenses authorizing humanitarian assistance
and exportation of medical devices, pharmaceuticals, and food
and livestock to Afghanistan. These permitted transactions with
the Taliban or Haqqani network. How do you evaluate the
benefits and risks to providing this aid? How can U.S. funding
and resources be most effectively deployed, and with which
Nations, international governing bodies, or nongovernmental
organizations should the U.S. partner to accomplish this?
A.2. Afghanistan is in the midst of an unprecedented
humanitarian disaster. The economy and health care system are
failing. There are millions of IDP's stranded, unable or
unwilling to return home. And according to a recent U.N. report
more than 45 percent of the country faces an acute food crisis.
There is no question that the people of Afghanistan desperately
need assistance. The OFAC licenses are a lifeline to the Afghan
people. But they also come with the obvious risk of empowering
and enriching a Taliban regime and its terrorist allies. We are
already seeing signs of both happening. I have heard reports of
large NGO's and multilateral organizations sidelining female
staff during direct interactions with the Taliban, and
providing aid directly to Taliban leaders for their own
personal use in return for permission to operate. The U.S.
cannot give into the Taliban demands for unconditional aid. Aid
to Afghanistan should be conditions based, it should empower
our Afghan allies on the ground, and provide much needed
employment and humanitarian relief to and tied to women's
rights, human rights, democracy promotion, and freedom of
speech.
The Taliban have and will continue to use humanitarian aid
as a weapon to increase its leverage over the Afghan people. We
should aim not to benefit or enrich the Taliban in any way. No
amount of aid should be tied to or lead to recognition and
normalization of relations with the Taliban. By establishing
humanitarian corridors in friendly neighbors such as
Tajikistan, assistance can be provided. Working with local NGOs
and civil society is the most effective way to deliver basic
services directly to the neediest populations throughout the
country, in the absence of a normal and functioning Government.
Attached please find a list of trusted local NGOs that I and my
committee have worked with throughout the years.
Q.3. Treasury sanctions relating to Afghanistan are primarily
directed toward the Afghan Taliban and not toward the
Government of Afghanistan. However, the Taliban now controls
the majority of former Afghan Government assets, including Da
Afghanistan Bank (DAB), Afghanistan's central bank. The Federal
Reserve currently holds over $9 billion in frozen assets
belonging to DAB. Do these frozen assets provide the U.S.
Government sufficient leverage to negotiate for more
humanitarian policies as the Taliban moves to govern?
A.3. No, I don't believe this money will provide the U.S.
sufficient leverage to do such a thing because the Taliban will
only promote the bare minimum humanitarian policies until funds
are released. If the Taliban were to care about the Afghan
people, then they would want to allow humanitarian aid to
Afghans, since they do not have the capacity to provide basic
services.
At no point in their history has the Taliban proved to be
honest brokers in any negotiations. The U.S. should not
negotiate with a terrorist regime. Any concessions to the
Taliban will only make them emboldened and will let the regime
use the money against the Afghan people both militarily and
politically. The Taliban has a long history of saying one
thing, especially to western media and diplomats, and doing
something entirely different on the ground. At its core the
Taliban is a violent organization that uses fear and violence
to control a large population with a relatively small force. At
the DPPC we have been documenting human rights abuses that have
occurred under Taliban rule, but do not get covered in
mainstream or western media.
In our latest report, which covers a 2-week period from
late October through early November, there were 24
extrajudicial killings across 16 provinces.
Thank you for keeping the good work that benefits
Afghanistan people and please keep them in your prayers too.
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
RESPONSES TO WRITTEN QUESTIONS OF CHAIRMAN BROWN
FROM SUE ECKERT
Q.1. Some have suggested using U.N. agencies as a conduit to
continue humanitarian, development and reconstruction aid to
Afghanistan, even though its mission has been hampered by the
need to evacuate many of its staff in the wake of the Taliban
takeover.
If the legal arrangements could be worked out, would U.N.
entities be a viable means--a safe channel--to provide not only
aid from Western Governments directly to the Afghan people,
bypassing the Taliban Government, but also to use at least a
portion of Afghanistan's currency reserves to provide such aid?
How would this likely work, as a practical matter?
A.1. Response not received in time for publication.
Q.2. In your written testimony to the Committee, and in your
oral presentations, you both advocated for expanded use of
OFAC's General Licenses to allow for the delivery of food,
medicine, and related items. For some time, the Taliban have
raised revenue by ``taxing'' or imposing surcharges on the
illegal movement of ordinary goods, like fuel and consumer
imports.
Given our shared desire to facilitate the delivery of
humanitarian and development aid while denying any benefit to
the Taliban or its allies, how would you suggest restructuring
western aid delivery mechanisms to avoid the kind of sanctions
``leakage'' you talked about--including denying the ability of
the Taliban to benefit from the imposition of illegal
surcharges, taxes, or other fees on aid?
A.2. Response not received in time for publication.
------
RESPONSES TO WRITTEN QUESTIONS OF SENATOR REED
FROM SUE ECKERT
Q.1. What are your thoughts on the best way to structure
sanctions on the Taliban?
A.1. Response not received in time for publication.
Q.2. What is your assessment of how the Trump administration's
unilateral negotiation of the Doha Agreement affected our
ability to work with allies and partners using the nonmilitary
tools of national security making?
A.2. Response not received in time for publication.
Q.3. What role do you think our allies and partners should play
in structuring effective sanctions? What should the role of
multilateral institutions be in this process--including the
U.N., the EU, or the G7?
A.3. Response not received in time for publication.
------
RESPONSES TO WRITTEN QUESTIONS OF SENATOR SINEMA
FROM SUE ECKERT
Q.1. The United Nations reported in June 2021 that the Taliban
reaps hundreds of millions of dollars in income from the poppy
harvest and drug trade, which may continue to be the Taliban
Government's largest source of revenue. Our servicemembers
fought to curtail drug production and worked with the Counter-
Narcotics Police of Afghanistan to limit those illicit
activities. What can we do now to limit opiate production and
prevent those drugs from finding their way to America?
A.1. Response not received in time for publication.
Q.2. In September 2021, Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets
Control issued two licenses authorizing humanitarian assistance
and exportation of medical devices, pharmaceuticals, and food
and livestock to Afghanistan. These permitted transactions with
the Taliban or Haqqani network. How do you evaluate the
benefits and risks to providing this aid? How can U.S. funding
and resources be most effectively deployed, and with which
Nations, international governing bodies, or nongovernmental
organizations should the U.S. partner to accomplish this?
A.2. Response not received in time for publication.
Q.3. Treasury sanctions relating to Afghanistan are primarily
directed toward the Afghan Taliban and not toward the
Government of Afghanistan. However, the Taliban now controls
the majority of former Afghan Government assets, including Da
Afghanistan Bank (DAB), Afghanistan's central bank. The Federal
Reserve currently holds over $9 billion in frozen assets
belonging to DAB. Do these frozen assets provide the U.S.
Government sufficient leverage to negotiate for more
humanitarian policies as the Taliban moves to govern?
A.3. Response not received in time for publication.
------
RESPONSES TO WRITTEN QUESTIONS OF SENATOR SINEMA
FROM THOMAS JOSCELYN
Q.1. Money laundering and terrorist financing remains a global
threat that is especially pervasive in Nations and regions
immediately after a significant destabilizing event such as a
swift and violent regime change like the one Afghanistan
experienced in August. How do you assess the networks financing
the Taliban following the August takeover? Do you understand
there to be any significant changes to these networks?
A.1. The Taliban maintained multiple revenue streams throughout
the nearly 20-year war, including from narcotics trafficking,
wealthy donors, seemingly legitimate businesses and tax
collection in the areas under the group's control. It is too
early to fully assess how these networks have or will change,
but I expect the Taliban's regime to receive more financial
assistance from ideologically minded donors and other parties
invested in the success of its Islamic emirate.
Q.2. In recent years, cryptocurrencies and other emerging
decentralized finance products have created new opportunities
for economic development in many communities, including in
Arizona. However, organized crime networks and other bad actors
have also begun to utilize these products to launder money to
support criminal and terrorist operations. What steps can
businesses that facilitate the transfer and use of
cryptocurrencies take to prevent their platforms from being
used for illicit purposes? How can Treasury empower businesses
to take these steps?
A.2. This is a complex topic. In short, I think sunshine is the
best disinfectant. The U.S. Treasury Department and other
Government agencies should continue to educate businesses on
the various nefarious schemes that are used to finance criminal
and terrorist operations, including any involving
cryptocurrencies. In particular, the U.S. Government should
continue to flag instances in which known bad actors use
cryptocurrencies in specific industries or transactions,
alerting private businesses to the risks.
Q.3. The United Nations reported in June 2021 that the Taliban
reaps hundreds of millions of dollars in income from the poppy
harvest and drug trade, which may continue to be the Taliban
Government's largest source of revenue. Our servicemembers
fought to curtail drug production and worked with the Counter-
Narcotics Police of Afghanistan to limit those illicit
activities. What can we do now to limit opiate production and
prevent those drugs from finding their way to America?
A.3. First and foremost, the U.S. needs to keep exposing the
Taliban members and affiliated actors who are profiting from
the drug trade. The U.S. Government did this throughout the war
by sanctioning key individuals, but there was always much more
that could have been done. In some cases, additional sanctions
are likely warranted. If the Taliban chooses to be a narco-
jihadist State, then the U.S. should make it clear to other
countries that doing business with the Islamic Emirate of
Afghanistan may implicate them in the drug trade and have
various financial ramifications.
Q.4. In September 2021, Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets
Control issued two licenses authorizing humanitarian assistance
and exportation of medical devices, pharmaceuticals, and food
and livestock to Afghanistan. These permitted transactions with
the Taliban or Haqqani network. How do you evaluate the
benefits and risks to providing this aid? How can U.S. funding
and resources be most effectively deployed, and with which
Nations, international governing bodies, or nongovernmental
organizations should the U.S. partner to accomplish this?
A.4. As I and other witnesses recommended at the hearing, the
U.S. should focus its aid efforts on foodstuffs and other
commodities that are difficult to convert to cash. The risk
with any such aid is that the Taliban, including the Haqqani
Network, will use it for its own purposes and not for the
intended recipients. I am not sure at this point which entities
would be the best options for delivering aid.
Q.5. Treasury sanctions relating to Afghanistan are primarily
directed toward the Afghan Taliban and not toward the
Government of Afghanistan. However, the Taliban now controls
the majority of former Afghan Government assets, including Da
Afghanistan Bank (DAB), Afghanistan's central bank. The Federal
Reserve currently holds over $9 billion in frozen assets
belonging to DAB. Do these frozen assets provide the U.S.
Government sufficient leverage to negotiate for more
humanitarian policies as the Taliban moves to govern?
A.5. I am skeptical that these frozen assets provide the U.S.
Government with much, if any, leverage. As I documented in my
written testimony before both the Senate Banking Committee and,
also recently, the Senate Armed Services Committee, the U.S.
never had any real leverage over the Taliban going back to the
1990s. For example, the U.S. and the United Nations threatened
to sanction the Taliban's first regime if it didn't turn over
Osama bin Laden. The Taliban chose to be sanctioned rather than
give up the world's most wanted terrorist. More recently, the
U.S. threatened to withhold aid if the Taliban used military
force to overthrow the now former Government of Afghanistan.
The Taliban chose military victory over cash. The Taliban
certainly wants financial assistance, but I don't think this
will lead the organization to moderate its behavior much at
all. The Taliban's primary goal all along has been to rule
according to its draconian version of Islamic law.