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U.S. authorizes some transactions with IEA to keep aid flowing to Afghanistan
The United States formally exempted on Wednesday U.S. and U.N. officials doing permitted business with the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan [IEA] from U.S. sanctions to try to maintain the flow of aid to Afghanistan as it sinks deeper into a humanitarian crisis, Reuters reported.
According to Reuters it was unclear, however, whether the move would pave the way for proposed U.N. payments of some $6 million to the IEA for security.
Reuters on Tuesday exclusively reported a U.N. plan to subsidize next year the monthly wages of IEA-run Interior Ministry personnel who guard U.N. facilities and to pay them monthly food allowances, a proposal that raised questions about whether the payments would violate U.S. sanctions.
The Treasury Department declined to say whether the new license would exempt the proposed U.N. payments from U.S. sanctions on the IEA.
Having designated the IEA as a terrorist group for years, Washington has ordered its U.S. assets frozen and barred Americans from dealing with them, read the report.
The Treasury on Wednesday issued three general licenses aimed at easing humanitarian aid flows into Afghanistan.
According to Reuters two of the licenses allow U.S. officials and those of certain international organizations, such as the United Nations, to engage in transactions involving the IEA or Haqqani Network for official business.
A third license gives non-governmental organizations (NGOs) protection from U.S. sanctions on the IEA and the Haqqani Network for work on certain activities, including humanitarian projects.
According to the report a senior U.S. administration official said the Islamic Emirate [IE] would have to take action to prevent Afghanistan’s economy from contracting further.
“What we can attempt to do, what we’re going to work to do, is to mitigate the humanitarian crisis by getting resources to the Afghan people, and these general licenses will allow us to allow organizations that are doing this work to do exactly that,” the official told reporters.
The top Republican on the U.S. House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee criticized the decision by Democratic President Joe Biden’s administration, Reuters reported.
The exemption “could result in using American taxpayer funds to reward, legitimize and enable the same IEA that took power by force and has shown no interest in abiding by international norms,” Representative Michael McCaul said in a statement.
Afghanistan’s economic crisis accelerated after the IEA seized power in August, as the former Western-backed government collapsed and the last U.S. troops withdrew.
The United States and other donors cut financial assistance, and more than $9 billion in Afghanistan’s hard currency assets were frozen, Reuters reported.
The United Nations says nearly 23 million people – about 55% of the population – are facing extreme levels of hunger, with nearly 9 million at risk of famine as winter takes hold, read the report.
“We will continue to support efforts by our partners to scale up assistance and deliver necessary relief during this moment of particular need,” U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement.
In a separate bid to address the crisis, the U.N. Security Council passed a resolution exempting donors, aid groups and financial institutions involved in humanitarian assistance from U.N. asset freezes on leaders of the IEA and associated entities.
The exemption is “solely for the provision of humanitarian assistance and other activities that support basic human needs in Afghanistan which the council will review in one year,” Jeffrey DeLaurentis, a senior adviser to the U.S. mission to the United Nations, said in urging approval of the measure, Reuters reported.
The Embassy of Japan in Afghanistan announced on Friday that the country has allocated $19.5 million in humanitarian assistance to Afghanistan.
In a statement, the Japanese Embassy said it hopes the aid will help bring positive change to the lives of vulnerable Afghans.
According to the statement, the assistance will cover the basic humanitarian needs of vulnerable communities in Afghanistan.
The embassy added that the aid will be delivered through United Nations agencies, international organizations, and Japanese non-governmental organizations operating in Afghanistan.
Japan’s total assistance to Afghanistan since August 2021 has reached more than $549 million.
Security forces at the Islam Qala border in Herat province prevented hundreds of young Afghans from illegally entering Iran.
Officials from the 207 Al-Farooq Army Corps said that around 530 people attempted over the past two days to illegally enter Iranian territory through areas of Kohsan district in Herat, but border forces detained them and transferred them back to their original areas.
Meanwhile, officials in the local administration of Herat said that due to severe cold along the illegal migration route to Iran, three Afghan migrants have lost their lives in the Kohsan district of the province, and a shepherd has also died there for the same reason.
Mohammad Yousuf Saeedi, spokesperson for the Herat governor’s office, said that some statistics and images shared on social media regarding the incident are not reliable.
According to him, further investigations are underway to determine whether any individuals have died on the other side of the border.
President Donald Trump suspended the green card lottery program on Thursday that allowed the suspect in the Brown University and MIT shootings to come to the United States.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said in a post on the social platform X that, at Trump’s direction, she is ordering the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services to pause the program, the Associated Press reported.
“This heinous individual should never have been allowed in our country,” she said of the suspect, Portuguese national Claudio Neves Valente.
Neves Valente, 48, is suspected in the shootings at Brown University that killed two students and wounded nine others, and the killing of an MIT professor. He was found dead Thursday evening from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, officials said.
Neves Valente had studied at Brown on a student visa beginning in 2000, according to an affidavit from a Providence police detective. In 2017, he was issued a diversity immigrant visa and months later obtained legal permanent residence status, according to the affidavit. It was not immediately clear where he was between taking a leave of absence from the school in 2001 and getting the visa in 2017.
The diversity visa program makes up to 50,000 green cards available each year by lottery to people from countries that are little represented in the U.S., many of them in Africa. The lottery was created by Congress, and the move is almost certain to invite legal challenges.
Nearly 20 million people applied for the 2025 visa lottery, with more than 131,000 selected when including spouses with the winners. After winning, they must undergo vetting to win admission to the United States. Portuguese citizens won only 38 slots.
Lottery winners are invited to apply for a green card. They are interviewed at consulates and subject to the same requirements and vetting as other green-card applicants.
Trump has long opposed the diversity visa lottery. Noem’s announcement is the latest example of using tragedy to advance immigration policy goals. After an Afghan man was identified as the gunman in a fatal attack on National Guard members in November, Trump’s administration imposed sweeping rules against immigration from Afghanistan and other counties.
While pursuing mass deportation, Trump has sought to limit or eliminate avenues to legal immigration. He has not been deterred if they are enshrined in law, like the diversity visa lottery, or the Constitution, as with a right to citizenship for anyone born on U.S. soil. The Supreme Court recently agreed to hear his challenge to birthright citizenship.
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