Afghanistan Extremism Financial Sanctions and Economic Coercion

Fast Thinking

August 24, 2021

FAST THINKING: A sanctioned Taliban now rules Afghanistan’s multibillion-dollar economy. How do we deal with that?

By Hagar Hajjar Chemali and Brian O’Toole

As the Taliban rapidly took over Afghanistan, countries rushed to understand the contours of existing sanctions on the Taliban and understand their impact. As of April 2021, the Afghan government controlled over nine billion dollars in reserves. But will the Taliban be able to access the money in Da Afghanistan Bank (DAB)?

On this episode of Fast Thinking, Hagar Chemali and Brian O’Toole, both nonresident senior fellows with the Atlantic Council’s GeoEconomics Center, discuss what it means for the Taliban to be sanctioned as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT) and how China and Russia may try to influence the situation on the ground.

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