RASC News Agency: Republican Senator Rand Paul has revealed that the United States has provided Afghanistan with $3.3 billion in aid since the withdrawal of U.S. forces. Writing in The Examiner, Paul stated that, as a member of the U.S. Senate, he has persistently sought to halt these financial transfers but has faced staunch opposition from Democratic lawmakers. Meanwhile, following his return to the White House, Donald Trump has signed executive orders suspending the majority of U.S. aid to Afghanistan an action that has sparked significant reactions. Prior to this, on the eve of his inauguration at the U.S. Capitol, Trump condemned the allocation of billions of dollars to Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, arguing that these funds should have been used to rebuild the U.S. military. He vowed that under his administration, such financial assistance would cease.
Trump further stated that if the Taliban were to return U.S. military equipment, he might consider releasing a portion of the frozen funds. The suspension of U.S. aid to Afghanistan has severely disrupted the Taliban’s economic control, throwing the group into disarray. Moreover, a senior official from the Taliban’s Ministry of Economy previously admitted that with the cessation of these funds, at least 50 international organizations had halted their operations within Afghanistan. Nevertheless, the U.S. State Department recently made an exception for what it describes as “life-saving humanitarian aid,” exempting such assistance from the broader aid suspension. Notably, the halt in U.S. financial support has led to an unprecedented depreciation of Afghanistan’s currency against the U.S. dollar, further exacerbating economic instability within the Taliban-controlled regime. In response, the Taliban government was forced to delay salary payments to its employees for up to three months.
These developments underscore the fragile nature of the Taliban’s rule, which appears heavily dependent on American financial assistance. Analysts argue that if these funds were completely severed, the Taliban regime would struggle to sustain itself for even a month.
