https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3684-2122
![Sample our Politics & International Relations journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5947/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Politics-International-Relations.jpg"})
Abstract
On August 15, 2021, American military forces withdrew from Kabul, and the sanctioning of Afghanistan began. Marred by the usual problems—ineffective, counterproductive, unwieldy—these sanctions revealed three additional puzzles. First, although grounded in targeted sanctions, they transformed into de facto comprehensive sanctions. Secondly, that transformation was instantaneous and unprompted. Thirdly, a near-famine followed within weeks. I make nested analytical, functional, and explanatory arguments. The analytical argument is that targeted sanctions are best understood not as tools of international coercion but primarily as domestic regulations. The functional argument is that the Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC) uses tactical and strategic ambiguity to maximize its regulatory reach over financial intuitions, humanitarian aid organizations, and money transfer organizations. The explanatory argument returns to the puzzles. I argue that, without any signal from OFAC, which was the signal, and reflecting OFAC’s regulatory domination, when the Taliban took Kabul, the international financial community, humanitarian aid organizations, and remittance providers all dissociated from Afghanistan with immediate effect and particularly acute consequences on food entitlements.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 Dean Lacy and Emerson M. S. Niou, “A Theory of Economic Sanctions and Issue Linkage: The Roles of Preferences, Information, and Threats,” The Journal of Politics 66, no. 1 (2004): 25–42.
2 Timothy M. Peterson, “Sending a Message: The Reputation Effect of US Sanction Threat Behavior,” International Studies Quarterly 57, no. 4 (2013): 672–82.
3 Daniel Drezner, “How Not to Sanction,” International Affairs 98, no. 5 (2022): 1533.
4 Richard Nephew, The Art of Sanctions: A View from the Field (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2018), 3.
5 Drezner, “How Not to Sanction.”
6 Daniel Drezner, “Targeted Sanctions in a World of Global Finance,” International Interactions 41, no. 4 (2015): 755.
7 Drezner, “How Not to Sanction,” 1534.
8 On the history of sanctions see Nicholas Mulder, The Economic Weapon: The Rise of Sanctions as a Tool of Modern War (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2022); on the sanctioning of Iraq see Joy Gordon, Invisible War: The United States and the Iraq Sanctions (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012).
9 Gordon, Invisible War, Chapter 2. The legal basis for the sanctions is the United Nations Security Council, “Resolution 661” (1990). For a review of the consequences, see Gordon, Invisible War, Chapter 5. See also Tim Dyson and Valeria Cetorelli, “Changing Views on Child Mortality and Economic Sanctions in Iraq: A History of Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics,” British Medical Journal: Global Health, no. 2 (2017); Michael Spagat, “Estimating the Human Costs of War: The Sample Survey Approach,” in The Oxford Handbook of the Economics of Peace and Conflict, ed. Michelle R. Garfinkel and Stergios Skaperdas (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2012), 318–40.
10 Daniel Drezner, “Sanctions Sometimes Smart: Targeted Sanctions in Theory and Practice,” International Studies Review 13 (2011): 96–108; Joy Gordon, “Smart Sanctions Revisited,” Ethics & International Affairs 25, no. 3 (2011): 315–35.
11 Drezner, “Targeted Sanctions in a World of Global Finance.” See also Sylvanus Kwaku Afesorgbor, “Sanctioned to Starve? The Impact of Economic Sanctions on Food Security in Targeted States,” in Research Handbook on Economic Sanctions, ed. Peter A. G. van Bergeijk (Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2021).
12 “The Treasury 2021 Sanctions Review” (The Department of the Treasury, October 2021), 1; Juan C. Zarate, Treasury’s War: The Unleashing of a New Era of Financial Warfare (New York, NY: PublicAffairs, 2013). Preble and Early have also mapped OFAC’s recent history. Although my account highlights different elements, I am indebted to their excellent survey, see Bryan R. Early and Keith A. Preble, “Going Fishing versus Hunting Whales: Explaining Changes in How the US Enforces Economic Sanctions,” Security Studies 29, no. 2 (2020): 231–67.
13 Zarate, Treasury’s War, 25–26.
14 Peter L. Fitzgerald, “‘If Property Rights Were Treated Like Human Rights, They Could Never Get Away with This’: Blacklisting and Due Process in U.S. Economic Sanctions Programs,” Hastings Law Journal 51, no. 1 (1999).
15 Fitzgerald.
16 “The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (9/11 Report),” November 22, 2004, 185.
17 For a first-person account of these developments, see Zarate, Treasury’s War. For a fascinating account of the case law, see Nina J Crimm, “High Alert: The Government’s War on the Financing of Terrorism and Its Implications for Donors, Domestic Charitable Organizations, and Global Philanthropy,” William and Mary Law Review 45, no. 4 (2004): 1341–452.
18 “Executive Order 13224” (U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Counterterrorism), accessed October 1, 2022, https://www.state.gov/executive-order-13224/.
19 Zarate, Treasury’s War, 29. For a recent account of the relevant laws, see Early and Preble, “Going Fishing versus Hunting Whales.”
20 “EO 13224.”
21 Ibid.
22 Ibid.
23 “Deputizing” in Jennifer Harris and Robert Kahn’s term, “Understanding and Improving U.S. Financial Sanctions,” in The Oxford Handbook of U.S. National Security, ed. Derek S. Reveron (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2017), 231.
24 See Grégoire Mallard and Jin Sun, “Viral Governance: How Unilateral U.S. Sanctions Changed the Rules of Financial Capitalism,” American Journal of Sociology 128, no. 1 (2022): 144–88; Bryan R. Early and Timothy M. Peterson, “The Enforcement of U.S. Economic Sanctions and Global De-Risking Behavior,” Journal of Conflict Resolution, Online first 2023, 1–28.
25 Mallard and Sun, “Viral Governance.”
26 Zarate, Treasury’s War, 86.
27 Ibid., 86–90.
28 Ibid., 8.
29 For an analysis of OFAC’s changing fining strategy see Early and Preble, “Going Fishing versus Hunting Whales.”
30 Early and Preble make this same argument.
31 For the classic economic analysis of this effect, see Uri Gneezy and Aldo Rustichini, “A Fine Is a Price,” The Journal of Legal Studies 29, no. 1 (2000): 1–17.
32 Iain MacNeil, “Enforcement and Sanctioning,” in The Oxford Handbook of Financial Regulations (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2015), 281. This literature never mentions Michel Foucault, but the parallels to his critique of disciplinary power are evident. See Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. Alan Sheridan (New York, NY: Vintage Books, 1977). See also Philip Pettit’s notion of “domination without interference,” Philip Pettit, Republicanism: A Theory of Freedom and Government (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1997), 63–64.
33 For example, The International Emergency Economic Powers Enhancement Act (IEEPEA) in 2007. For an excellent review of these legislative developments, see Early and Preble, “Going Fishing versus Hunting Whales”; Zarate, Treasury’s War: The Unleashing of a New Era of Financial Warfare. See also Early and Peterson, “The Enforcement of U.S. Economic Sanctions and Global De-Risking Behavior.”
34 Early and Preble, “Going Fishing versus Hunting Whales”; Jesse Van Genugten, “Conscripting the Global Banking Sector: Assessing the Importance and Impact of Private Policing in the Enforcement of U.S. Economic Sanctions,” Berkeley Business Law Journal 18, no. 1 (2021): 136–64.
35 “Office of Public Affairs | BNP Paribas Agrees to Plead Guilty and to Pay $8.9 Billion for Illegally Processing Financial Transactions for Countries Subject to U.S. Economic Sanctions | United States Department of Justice,” August 29, 2014, https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/bnp-paribas-agrees-plead-guilty-and-pay-89-billion-illegally-processing-financial [emphasis added]; U.S. Department of Justice, “Paribas Plea Agreement,” June 27, 2014, https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/opa/legacy/2014/06/30/plea-agreement.pdf.
36 Department of the Treasury, “Paribas/Treasury Settlement Agreement,” June 30, 2014, https://ofac.treasury.gov/media/13521/download?inline.See also Tom Ruys and Cedric Ryngaert, “Secondary Sanctions: A Weapon out of Control? The International Legality of, and European Responses to, US Secondary Sanctions,” British Yearbook of International Law, 2020, 17.
37 Pierre-Hugues Verdier, “‘A Hidden War’: Sanctions Evasion,” in Global Banks on Trial: U.S. Prosecutions and the Remaking of International Finance, ed. Pierre-Hugues Verdier (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2020), 137.
38 Early and Preble, “Going Fishing versus Hunting Whales,” 254.
39 “OFAC Enters Into US$34,328.78 Settlement with MoneyGram Payment Systems, Inc. for Apparent Violations of Multiple Sanctions Programs” (Department of the Treasury, April 29, 2021).
40 “OFAC Enters Into $34,328.78 Settlement with MoneyGram Payment Systems, Inc. for Apparent Violations of Multiple Sanctions Programs.”
41 “9/11 Commission Report,” 185, n. 79.
42 For an excellent discussion of Hawala in Afghanistan see Haroun Rahimi, Reform and Regulation of Economic Institutions in Afghanistan (London, UK: Routledge, 2023).
43 Zarate, Treasury’s War: The Unleashing of a New Era of Financial Warfare, 95.
44 Ibid., 95.
45 Rahimi, Reform and Regulation of Economic Institutions in Afghanistan, Chapter 3.
46 The World Bank, “World Bank Open Data” (The World Bank), accessed March 24, 2023, https://data.worldbank.org.
47 Crimm, “High Alert: The Government’s War on the Financing of Terrorism and Its Implications for Donors, Domestic Charitable Organizations, and Global Philanthropy.”
48 Ken Menkhaus, “No Access: Critical Bottlenecks in the 2011 Somali Famine,” Global Food Security 1 (2012): 32.
49 Sarah Margon, “Unintended Roadblocks: How US Terrorism Restrictions Make It Harder to Save Lives” (Washington, DC: Center for American Progress, 2011); quotation found in Menkhaus, “No Access,” 38.
50 Amartya Sen, “Starvation and Exchange Entitlements: A General Approach and Its Application to the Great Bengal Famine,” Cambridge Journal of Economics 1, no. 1 (1977): 33–59; Amartya Sen, Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation (Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1981). Sen’s arguments have been criticized and expanded, but the core analytical principle holds. See Olivier Rubin, “The Entitlement Approach: A Case for Framework Development Rather than Demolition: A Comment on ‘Entitlement Failure and Deprivation: A Critique of Sen’s Famine Philosophy,’” The Journal of Development Studies 45, no. 4 (2009): 621–40; Olivier Rubin, “Famine Ethics,” Food Ethics 4 (2019): 123–38; Alex de Waal, Mass Starvation: The History and Future of Famine (Cambridge UK: Polity, 2018).
51 De Waal, Mass Starvation, Chapter 7.
52 J. Matthew Hoye, “Famine, Remittances, and Global Justice,” World Development Perspectives 27 (2022).
53 U.S. Department of the Treasury, “Treasury Targets Somali Terrorists (Press Release),” November 20, 2008, HP-1283, https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/hp1283.
54 The foremost account of these developments is Daniel Maxwell and Merry Fitzpatrick, “The 2011 Somalia Famine: Context, Causes, and Complications,” Global Food Security 1 (2012): 5–12. In the background was Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project, No. 08-1498; 09-89 (Supreme Court of the United States 2010). As Maxwell and Fitzpatrick note:
In June 2010, the US Supreme Court ruled that the provision of any material support to a terrorist organization could result in legal action against any US citizen involved. Although this particular case (Holder vs. Humanitarian Law Project) did not involve Somalia, no humanitarian agency working in Somalia failed to take notice (9).
55 Menkhaus, “No Access”; see also Maxwell and Fitzpatrick, “The 2011 Somalia Famine”; Manuel Orozco and Julia Yansura, “Keeping the Lifeline Open: Remittances and Markets in Somalia” (Oxfam International, 2013), http://hdl.handle.net/2307/3019; Hoye, “Famine, Remittances, and Global Justice”; Daniel Maxwell and R Majid, Famine in Somalia: Competing Imperatives, Collective Failures, 2011–12, 2016, chap. 3. Jeffrey Gettleman and Neil MacFarquhar, “Somalia Food Aid Bypasses Needy, U.N. Study Says,” New York Times, March 9, 2010.
56 Menkhaus, “No Access.”
57 Ibid.
58 Laura Hammond et al., “Cash and Compassion: The Role of the Somali Diaspora in Relief, Development and Peace-Building” (United Nations Development Programme, 2011).
59 Peter T. Leeson, “Better off Stateless: Somalia Before and After Government Collapse,” Journal of Comparative Economics 35 (2007): 689–710.
60 Hammond et al., “Cash and Compassion: The Role of the Somali Diaspora in Relief, Development and Peace-Building.”
61 Maxwell and Majid, Famine in Somalia, 68.
62 “Joint Declaration between the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan and the United States of America for Bringing Peace to Afghanistan,” February 29, 2020, https://www.state.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/02.29.20-US-Afghanistan-Joint-Declaration.pdf.
63 “Doha Agreement,” pts. 1, d-e.
64 Paul L. Lee, “Compliance Lessons from OFAC Case Studies - Part I,” Banking Law Journal 131, no. 8 (2014): 657–87; Paul L. Lee, “Compliance Lessons from OFAC Case Studies - Part II,” Banking Law Journal 131, no. 9 (2014): 717–66; Drezner, “How Not to Sanction.”
65 For a similar discussion, see Early and Peterson, “The Enforcement of U.S. Economic Sanctions and Global De-Risking Behavior.”
66 Verdier.
67 This Verdier’s list, see Verdier, “‘A Hidden War’: Sanctions Evasion.”
68 For examples of de-risking runs, see the Somalia and Afghanistan cases discussed in this article. These arguments are broadly supported by a wealth of interview evidence collected by Mallard and Sun, “Viral Governance.” See also Early and Peterson, “The Enforcement of U.S. Economic Sanctions and Global De-Risking Behavior”; Verdier, “Sanctions Overcompliance.”
69 “Afghanistan: Acute Food Insecurity Situation September - October 2021 and Projection for November 2021 - March 2022,” accessed January 10, 2024, https://www.ipcinfo.org/ipc-country-analysis/details-map/en/c/1155210/?iso3=AFG.
70 Imran-Ullah Kahn, “WFP Calls for Urgent Aid as Millions of Afghans Face Starvation,” Al Jazeera, August 24, 2021, https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/8/24/wfp-food-aid-afghanistan-starvation-taliban.
71 Marc Santora, Nick Cumming-Bruce, and Christina Goldbaum, “A Million Afghan Children Could Die in ‘Most Perilous Hour,’ U.N. Warns,” The New York Times, September 13, 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/13/world/asia/afghanistan-united-nations-crisis.html.
72 “Afghanistan: Acute Food Insecurity Situation September - October 2021 and Projection for November 2021 - March 2022.”
73 Ibid.
74 Peyvand Khorsandi, “‘Our Presence Is Hope’: US$2.6bn Needed as Winter Spells Hunger for Afghanistan” (World Food Programme, January 25, 2022), https://www.wfp.org/stories/our-presence-hope-call-funds-winter-spells-hunger-afghanistan-0.
75 Sophie Gorman, “Soaring Pneumonia and Starvation Is Killing Thousands of Children in Afghanistan,” France 24, February 2, 2022, https://www.france24.com/en/asia-pacific/20220202-soaring-pneumonia-and-starvation-is-killing-thousands-of-children-in-afghanistan.
76 Ibid.
77 “Afghanistan: Acute Food Insecurity Situation for March - May 2022 and Projection for June - November 2022”.
78 https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/exclusive-us-treasury-issued-new-license-ease-flow-aid-afghanistan-2021-09-01/. On remittances and humanitarian aid, see J. Matthew Hoye, “Global Justice and the Remittances Challenge: On Political Ontology and Agency,” Constellations 28, no. 2 (2021): 234–51. See also, Grégoire Mallard, Farzan Sabet, and Jin Sun, “The Humanitarian Gap in the Global Sanctions Regime: Assessing Causes, Effects, and Solutions,” Global Governance: A Review of Multilateralism and International Organizations 26, no. 1 (2020): 139.
79 https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/exclusive-western-union-resuming-services-afghanistan-senior-exec-2021-09-02/. And they have good reason to be very weary, see: https://home.treasury.gov/policy-issues/financial-sanctions/recent-actions/20190607_33.
80 OFAC, “General License 19,” December 22, 2021, https://home.treasury.gov/system/files/126/ct_gl19.pdf.
81 “951,” US Department of the Treasury, March 17, 2023, https://home.treasury.gov/policy-issues/financial-sanctions/faqs/951.
82 “U.S. Department of the Treasury, Frequently Asked Questions, #958,” February 2, 2022, https://home.treasury.gov/policy-issues/financial-sanctions/faqs/958.
83 Rahimi, Reform and Regulation of Economic Institutions in Afghanistan.
84 Haroun Rahimi, “How to Create Better Hawala Regulations: A Case Study of Hawala Regulations in Afghanistan,” Crime, Law and Social Change 76, no. 2 (September 2021): 131–48.
85 World Bank, “World Bank Data (Personal Remittances, Received (% of GDP) - Afghanistan),” August 28, 2023, https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/BX.TRF.PWKR.DT.GD.ZS?locations=AF.
86 Erica Moret, “Life and Death: NGO Access to Financial Services in Afghanistan” (Norwegian Refugee Council, 2022), 26.
87 Drezner, “How Not to Sanction.”