White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki made clear during her press briefing on Dec. 13 that the U.S. has no plans to release Afghan funds on deposit in U.S. financial institutes any time soon. The reserves remain inaccessible to the Taliban, she said, for several reasons, among them is that the funds are the subject of litigation brought by several survivors of the 9/11 attacks leading to the temporary suspension of the funds.
Secondly, Psaki went on, “the United States continues to face difficult fundamental questions about how it might be able to make reserve funds available to directly benefit the people of Afghanistan while ensuring that the funds do not benefit the Taliban.” It is difficult, she claimed, to determine how humanitarian assistance “would not benefit the Taliban as it relates to these funds.”
