A July 26-27 conference in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, brought together 100 delegations representing 30 countries, to discuss the current situation in Afghanistan and prospects for future development. The conference was convened by Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev, who has taken the lead in urging the international community to help stabilize Afghanistan economically and politically.
The members of the Afghan delegation who attended, led by acting Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi, were reportedly upbeat and came with a message that their government had taken certain steps to comply with international requirements and that they now required Western investment. In this context they called for the U.S. and its Western allies to unfreeze the $9 billion in funds that were illegally seized from Afghanistan’s Central Bank in August of 2021 after the Taliban took power. Russia’s representative, Zamir Kubilov, called the West’s seizure of those funds “outright robbery,” TASS reported.
