Dear President Biden,

We thank you for ending the U.S.’s longest war. The 20-year-long war in Afghanistan cost the American people $2.26 trillion and has accomplished nothing but death and destruction. According to the UN refugee agency, the UNHCR, there are over three million Afghan internal refugees in dire need of food, shelter, clean water, and medical care. Rather than the U.S. funding the UNHCR’s urgent appeal for $350 million, which the U.S. should do, you have pressured the International Monetary Fund to withhold $450 million in funds designated to help Afghanistan deal with the coronavirus pandemic which is raging in the country. You have also frozen nearly all of the Afghan Central Bank’s $9.4 billion in foreign currency reserves, depriving the new government of funds that it will desperately need in the coming months to feed its people and provide basic services. 

As people concerned with the health and well-being of the Afghan people, and as people calling for U.S. accountability for the terrible wounds and trauma the U.S. inflicted on the Afghan people over the past 20 years, we call on you to immediately stop pressuring the IMF not to release COVID-19 aid to Afghanistan. You should also unfreeze the $9.4 billion, fully fund the UN’s 2021 appeal for emergency aid, which as of late August was less than 40% funded, and shift the $6 billion allocated for the now-defunct Afghan armed forces to humanitarian aid, instead of diverting it to other forms of wasteful military spending.

Sincerely,