“U.S. Senator Joseph Biden said Western nations should immediately release frozen Taliban assets to provide the government with about $100 million for its six-month term replacing the hard-line Islamic rulers.

“‘For a government to maintain any credibility with the people, it has to have the ability to pay people’s salaries, turn on the lights, be able to have desks, stationery, telephones, fax machines, et cetera,'” the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee said on a visit to Kabul.” Reuters reports that

The fleeing Taliban looted Afghanistan’s central bank. ‘We have a zero budget … We’re going to Tokyo with empty pockets,’ Planning Minister Haji Mohammad Mohaqiq said.

The request for $45 billion over 10 years is at least triple the sums that have been previously discussed and would bring about $1,800 for each of the estimated 25 million people in Afghanistan — one of the poorest nations in the world.

Let’s see how big a slice of that oil-rich petrol-cake Muslim countries put on Afghanistan’s offerings plate…

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