(Bloomberg) -- The Taliban-led government in Afghanistan said it wants a fresh start with the US under President-elect Donald Trump and secure long-sought access to more than $9 billion of the nation’s foreign exchange reserves seized three years ago.
“We seek a new chapter of relations with the Trump administration and want the coming Trump administration to reciprocate this,” the head of the Taliban’s political office in Qatar, Mohammad Suhail Shaheen, said via text message. “We want all the Da Afghanistan Bank reserves to be unfrozen and returned to us,” he added, referring to the nation’s central bank.
It’s not clear how realistic the Taliban’s hopes for an improved relationship really are. The Trump administration brokered the original 2020 agreement with the Taliban for US forces to withdraw, sending then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to negotiate directly with the group’s leadership in Qatar. But the botched withdrawal of US forces under President Joe Biden in 2021 was frequently raised by Trump on the campaign trail.
Trump’s pick for national security advisor, Mike Waltz, is a veteran of the Afghan war from his days as a Green Beret. That history could also impact the next administration’s views of the Taliban.
Read: EU Nations Mull Reopening Afghan Embassies, Recognizing Taliban
Establishing normal relations with the US would help the Taliban’s efforts to get international recognition for its pariah government, and the funds would be a huge relief for the cash-strapped Taliban, which has been battling to rebuild an economy devastated by sanctions and the loss of international aid.
The US and its Western allies had previously said they want to see the Taliban address human rights issues in Afghanistan and to ensure no terror groups flourish in the country before any significant engagement. But the human rights situation has only deteriorated in recent years, with the Taliban ramping up ever-more severe restrictions on women.
Biden ordered the freezing of more than $7 billion in Afghanistan government reserves held in the US since August 2021 and has refused to recognize the Taliban as the country’s official rulers. Several US allies followed suit on $2 billion deposited in their financial systems.
Biden later agreed to release $3.5 billion in assets and transfer it to an independent Afghan Fund in Switzerland to boost the nation’s economy while keeping the cash out of the hands of the Taliban, with the remaining half left for the families of victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to pursue in court. It is unknown how the Afghan Fund operates or handles financial transactions when the country is cut off from the global financial system.
While a handful of countries, including China, Pakistan and Russia, have accepted Taliban diplomats, they don’t formally recognize the government, which has been condemned internationally for repeated human rights violations. China was the first nation to grant diplomatic credentials to the Taliban last year.
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