How the president of the Afghan central bank went from stopping a devaluation to fleeing the country for fear of assassination

The governor of the Afghan central bank, Ajmal Ahmady, detailed on Sunday his painful flight from the country in a military plane after he and his team tried to stabilize the currency amid the advance of the Taliban towards the capital.

Ahmady, who did not say where he was, noted that the central bank was informed on Friday that “given the deteriorating environment, we would no longer receive dollar shipments“And met on Saturday with representatives of banks and exchange houses to reassure them.

“Once (the) president’s departure has been announced, I knew in a few minutes chaos would follow. i can’t forgive him for creating this without a transition plan, ”he tweeted on Monday.

“It didn’t have to end that way. I am disgusted by the lack of planning of the Afghan leadership. Saw at the airport that they left without informing to others, ”Ahmady said on Twitter.

Ahmady is considered a declared enemy of the Taliban because of the reformist policies he promoted during his brief tenure as head of the Ministry of Industry and Commerce.. This eminent Harvard-trained economist has 32,000 Twitter followers and a few contacts that allowed him to leave the country, a chance that thousands of his compatriots were unable to run.

Ahmady was appointed by presidential decree of June 3, 2020 as head of the central bank, although he was never ratified by the Afghan parliament; managed to get away with counting hours and admitted that the collapse of the Executive was “Confusing and difficult to understand.”

Although he could hardly believe it, the governor does not exclude that there was an order “from above” not to fight the Taliban. “The explanations are lacking”, he lamented, on the fact that the security forces left their positions to allow the advance of the fundamentalists.

I cannot forgive the president for creating this situation without having a transition plan. He had good ideas poorly executed (Ajmal Ahmady)

Ahmady recounted his last day on the job, in an attempt to calm markets and citizens before the insurgents took control of Kabul, as a panicked exodus of officials took place. He said that same morning his family called him to inform him that the government had left the capital. “I was stunned”He said, and before the imminent fall of the main city of the country, he decided to do the same: he started the flight with the purchase of plane tickets for that Monday.

The Chief noted that many of the key government figures were already at the airport when he arrived, Sunday, even before the capture of the capital. The President of Parliament “seemed happy”Ahmady denounced.

For a moment the banker was about to be blocked: your flight has been canceled, He had to run to another door to try his luck But the flight – in which 300 people wanted to travel despite having a capacity of only 100 seats – had no fuel or pilot. At the last moment of the “companions”, as he identified them, they gave him a seat on a military plane besieged by the crowd, as gunshots were heard in the background.

Afghanistan’s reserves stand at $ 9.4 billion, but most of it is deposited outside the country

It is not yet clear where Ahmady landed, but his demands to the outgoing government have been heard, in the absence of an evacuation plan that turned senior officials into a group of fugitives. “I cannot forgive the president for creating this situation without having a transition plan. He had good ideas that were poorly executed, ”he said.

The offer for the Afghan reserves

The Biden administration said on Monday that the Taliban will not have access to the monetary reserves of the Central Bank from afghanistan kept in accounts in the United States.

“All the Central Bank assets that the Afghan government has in the United States he will not be available for the Taliban, ”he told the agency AFP a government official from Joe biden, as US forces evacuated the capital of Afghanistan after the rapid takeover by the Taliban.

The RThe gross reserves of the Central Bank of Afghanistan stood at $ 9.4 billion end of April, according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Corn the vast majority of these reserves are outside Afghanistan, underlined the AFP a source familiar with the matter, without however specifying what percentage of assets are in the United States.

The Taliban’s seizure of power came after the NATO withdraws its 9,500-man mission in Afghanistan after Biden’s decision to withdraw his troops from the country.

The Afghan President, Achraf Ghani, left the country on Sunday evening as insurgents surrounded the capital, culminating in a military victory that saw them capture every city in just 10 days.

Cut multilateral aid

In addition to freeze assets, Washington could also block aid to Afghanistan from multilateral lenders such as the IMF and the World Bank, as it has done with other regimes it does not recognize, such as Venezuela.

“Afghanistan is hugely dependent on foreign aid (…) so access to international economic funds will be crucial,” he said. Vanda Felbab-Brown, foreign policy expert at the Brookings Institution.

But cut funding in an attempt to undermine the Taliban government “a huge humanitarian consequences and the consequences for human and economic development, ”he said in statements AFP.

The insurgent government will suffer from the asset freeze and the difficulty of accessing external credit

And there are also political calculations, since others Funding sources like Russia, China and Saudi Arabia will not have the same vision than Washington on the need to respect women’s rights or human rights, and can just focus on securing a commitment against terrorism, he explained.

In June, the IMF releases final tranche of $ 370 million loan in Afghanistan approved in November to help support the economy in the face of the covid-19 pandemic.

The Fund then ensured that the Afghan government had kept its economic program on track despite the fact that “security has deteriorated and uncertainty has increased as peace talks between the government and the Taliban have deteriorated. are at a standstill, and that US and NATO troops plan to withdraw by September ”. .

For its part, the world Bank has more than two dozen ongoing development projects in Afghanistan and has provided $ 5.3 billion since 2002, mainly in donations. The United States has granted $ 4.7 billion aid to Afghanistan in the 2019 fiscal year alone, according to government data.

“Members of the Taliban government have no experience in dealing with international donors,” Felbab-Brown said. “They have no experience in administration big international aid packages ”.

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