Winter is coming: Frozen assets leave penniless Afghan traders out in the cold

Aqina is a border crossing with rail service connecting Afghanistan to Turkmenistan, and onward to Azerbaijan, Georgia, Turkey and Europe. It is an essential trading point linking Afghanistan with the countries to the west.

A handful of local businessmen who met to drink tea complained about the worsened business situation. They said their business had been destroyed after the freezing of Afghan assets by Washington.

“Our business is a failure. We cannot get money from the banks, so we can’t import enough goods. Business has never been worse,” Aqina oil importer Mohammad Daud Niazi said.

Niazi’s business is all but non-existent, after the United States freezing over $9 billion in assets belonging to the Afghan central bank; following the takeover of Afghanistan by the Taliban in the middle of August.

Washington withdrew all the US forces from Afghanistan in August leaving behind political uncertainty, extreme poverty, economic instability, and pretty much bankrupting the country and leaving the people to clean up the mess.

Many Afghans blame the chaotic situation in part on the US freezing of Afghanistan’s central bank assets, which prompted the local people to withdraw whatever they can from the banks. To avoid bankruptcy, the central bank has placed severe restrictions on withdrawals.

“We can’t withdraw enough money and so cant import enough goods,” another trader Abdul Rashid told Xinhua. “Every day, we can import up to five wagons of flour from Turkmenistan. We have no money to do anything else.”

It’s a similar story for the Customs Department in Aqina. Mawlawi Jawid also blamed the United States. “We used to import flour, wheat, oil and gas from Turkmenistan by truck and rail,” he said. The official also confirmed that up to 500 tonnes of fuel is imported every day.

The Taliban caretaker government whose formation was announced on September 7, 2021 has repeatedly called upon the United States to unfreeze assets with aid agencies warning of acute food shortages for more than 22 million Afghans in the coming winter.

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