The Next Afghan Battle

It looks like the next battle of Afghanistan is being signaled by Russia with its call for the world to unfreeze Afghanistan’s foreign reserves. That’s what we take from the decision of an envoy of President Putin to go on state television Monday and, as the Washington Post headline summed it up, call on the world to “unfreeze Afghanistan’s reserves and pour in aid to rebuild the country.”Count us out. We wouldn’t invest ten cents in the Taliban’s second tyranny over Afghanistan. We still remember 1976, when the president of the World Bank, Robert Strange McNamara, had his first meeting with our communist foes in Vietnam. It was less than a decade after our ex-defense secretary began, as the Pentagon was engulfed by protestors denouncing the war, weeping into the curtains in his office.McNamara’s opening to Vietnam has been followed over the years by the lending to the communists who rule Vietnam of more than $24 billion — and there are still no rights to property, sound currency, religious, economic, or political freedom. Yet after leaving the World Bank, McNamara had a jolly meeting with the North Vietnam general who led the war against us. It’s something to remember as the Democrats begin plumping to underwrite the Islamist tyranny now clamping down on the country.It was encouraging to read that on August 15 the Federal Reserve and the International Monetary Fund froze Afghanistan’s accounts, though it’s hard to see how they could have done otherwise. The Taliban now is like a mass murderer who has broken into a fancy home and is trying to access the bank accounts of its owner. A week after the IMF and the Federal Reserve acted, even the World Bank suspended lending.We have great confidence in the current president of the World Bank, David Malpass. It’s clear, though, that all these institutions are going to come under enormous pressure to free up the Afghan reserves and start underwriting the new government. Mr. Putin’s envoy, Zamir Kabulov, went on Russ state television yesterday to call for an international conference to marshal funding for the Taliban regime.His conceit, according to the report in the Washington Post, is that it would enable America and our allies to “correct at least some of the mistakes” we have made in the past 20 years. The Post reckons that the Afghan central bank has about $9.5 billion in reserves and that about $7 billion of that total is held in American institutions. It says that what the IMF blocked was $460 million in emergency reserves.It’s going to take real leadership in Washington to prevent the Taliban from getting its hands on this lucre, much of which can be traced back to the wallets of American taxpayers. No doubt — and the Washington Post report marks this point — Russia fears “possible new conflicts, spreading terrorism and a humantitarian catastrophe scattering millions of Afghan refugees across the region.”So naturally Russia wants to throw American taxpayer dollars at the problem. The Post story notes that it has been calling on the West to “accept the reality” of the Taliban victory, while pressing the Taliban to form a diverse government. It does this even while warning that, as the Post puts it, “no one should expect the Taliban to meet Western standards for democracy and cultural and religious practices.”Our view is that the Taliban made its own bed. America certainly has other priorities. We would conduct our future relations with the war department and our covert agencies. America tends to rush to fund our devastated theaters when we’ve won the war. What in the world, though, is the logic of our rushing in to fund regimes that have yet to lay down the arms in which they’ve been levying war against us?

The Next Afghan Battle

The Next Afghan Battle

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