International sanctions against Afghanistan
The same year, Resolution 1214 was adopted in which the Council demanded: "the Taliban stop providing sanctuary and training for international terrorists and their organizations".
[5][4] On November 5, 1998 Osama bin Laden and his military chief Muhamad Atef were accused in the US District Court of New York for a planned attack on US defense establishments.
In Resolution 1267, the Security Council justified the sanctions regime by referring to violation of humanitarian law in Afghanistan, discrimination against women and the presence of an illicit opiate production.
[6] The objectives of the sanctions have evolved from ending armed conflict and creating a more representative government to emphasising the prevention of terrorism and women's rights, to advocating complete regime change.
The committee is mandated to: The purpose of the United Nation's asset freeze was to deny listed individuals, groups or entities the "means to support or finance terrorism".
[18][19] The Travel Ban was a preventative measure with the purpose to stop individuals, who were on the Consolidated List, from entering or transitting through the territories of United Nations member states.
[20] The onus fell on member states to implement the travel ban against all individuals on the Al-Qaeda Sanctions List, in their national guidelines in accordance with their domestic legislation.
[20] Member states were also requested to submit “photographs and other biometric data”[20] on listed individuals so they could be included in Interpol-United Nations Security Council special notices.
These support mechanisms had the power to review the enforcement of sanctions by member states and report to the Security Council on the implementation of the resolution at regular intervals.
[23] The onus on implementing the Taliban element of the arms embargo imposed by Resolution 1390 lies primarily with Afghanistan and its six bordering states, i.e. China, Iran, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.
[34] The United Nations failed to coerce the Taliban-controlled Afghan government to hand over Osama bin Laden, who was killed in Pakistan in 2011 as a part of the US war effort in Afghanistan.
The sanctions support team, which was tasked with implementing the Arms Embargo along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, was described as a small and "inadequate force" which was placed in the region following the September 11 terrorist attacks.
[45] In response to the 9/11 attacks in the United States, the US government launched an American-led military campaign declaring the Global War on Terror on September 11, 2001.
The Executive Order underlines that the invasion was followed by a significant alteration of the situation concerning the Taliban and therefore the national emergency in the United States had diminished.
From December 2021, NGOs and news agencies reported the alarming signs of the early stages of widespread famine and the emergence of a humanitarian crisis.
[6] This was also partially due to the blockade of financial and humanitarian capital flow, which can be attributed considerably to the US sanctions and deterrence from the OFAC and its fines.
The authors from "The Human Consequences of Economic Sanctions" exemplify that in August 2021, an Indian company tasked with constructing electric utility transmission lines suspended progress on its five projects within the country, asserting that the US had effectively halted all funding channels to Afghanistan.
[52] Moreover, trading companies active in Afghanistan and the Afghan people themselves have difficulties understanding the full nature of permissible contact with sanctioned persons.
[53] On January 1st 2023, The Washington Post on Middle Eastern Affairs states that US-led sanctions are the driving force behind mass starvation in Afghanistan.
In August 2000 the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reported that the existing sanctions had a “tangible negative effect” on Afghanistan's populace.
[60] In the Lancet, Representatives of Afghans for a Better Tomorrow showcased the subtlety of sanction consequences in their statement that “people are dying in their homes and nobody is counting those deaths”.
The Taliban's misallocation of resources in a resource-scarce environment disproportionately impacts the most vulnerable and marginalized Afghans, specifically women and ethnic minorities.
The earthquake survivors called for Western sanctions to be lifted in order to reduce their suffering and provide access to funds to rebuild houses, hospitals and school.
With Ecuador’s delegate saying that it is “impossible to talk about national unity and reconciliation when women and girls, half of the Afghan population, are marginalized and rendered invisible”.
[64] The near-famine crisis mid 2022 was averted due to remittances transferred through the historic Hawala system, the informal currency exchange that originates from the Asian continent.
The Hawala system facilitated the majority of economic activity in Afghanistan since the imposition of the sanctions blocked most formal financial transactions.
These suggestions were accepted on the basis of "political trust," rather than "credible information" regarding personal connections to the Taliban, bin Laden or al-Qaeda.
Accordingly, the OFAC explicitly states on its website that it does not impose comprehensive sanctions on Afghanistan, because it does not recognize the Taliban as the official government.
[72] This contradiction displays controversy surrounding the subjective definitions that are accounted to sanctions in the context of Afghanistan, and its differentiating intentions and objectives underlying the policy.
It concludes: If the international system can find a liminal space between pariah and legitimate status that allows Afghanistan to keep functioning, it would undermine the Taliban’s overheated rhetoric about a titanic clash between Islam and the West.
