KABUL, 06 February 2022, (TON): A senior UN official said “the United Nations has about $135 million in the bank in Afghanistan but is unable to use it because the Taliban-run central bank cannot convert it to the afghani currency.”

Abdallah al Dardari, head of the UN Development Programme in Afghanistan, said “the United Nations had taken the US dollars into the country and deposited it with the Afghanistan International Bank with a clear promise from the central bank that fresh cash will be automatically converted to afghanis.”

He told the ACAMS Global Sanctions Space Summit “this did not happen.”

He added that UNDP itself has “$30 million stuck at AIB that I cannot convert to afghanis and without afghanis as you can imagine, we cannot implement all our programs.”

The Taliban, who seized power in August, banned the use of foreign currency in a country where US dollars were common.

The Islamist group has long been under international sanctions, which the United Nations and aid groups say are now hindering humanitarian operations in Afghanistan, where more than half the country’s 39 million people suffer extreme hunger and the economy, education and social services face collapse.