Abstract:
Afghanistan, on the verge of its greatest reconstruction era and
at a time that it has welcomed back between 300,000 to 400,000
of its refugees from Iran and Pakistan, needs a viable
currency. Apparently the Afghani as it is today cannot respond
to meet the need, as it is subject to use and abuse by a variety
of warlords and their establishments.
Also, the time is
ripe to cut the war mongering characteristics of the Afghani and
introduce its new and proper use for the reconstruction of a
devastated land. Furthermore, the influence of the warlords
over the Afghan currency should be cut out.
For many Afghans in exile and especially
those who have lived the past two decades in the West, it sounds
surreal to imagine people in Afghanistan carrying their cash of
the Afghani notes in garbage bags and dumping wads over wads of
a variety of paper on which the Afghani is printed onto the
bakers shop-board for a couple of the famous Afghan Naan, bread
loaf.
Yet the super-inflation caused by politics
of war has made this a reality although rather hard to believe.
Early in the 1980s, an American Dollar bought about 70 Afghanis.
The extended war, especially after the fall of the last
communist regime of Najibullah, brought about an unprecedented
inflationary trend that resulted in the deepest plunges of the
Afghan currency. During the last days of the Taleban regime, an
American Dollar bought around 47,000 Afghanis.
With the downfall of the Taleban, it was
expected that the price of the Afghani would rise as sharply as
it had plunged. Well, this did not happen as the new Interim
Authority found itself entangled with many political dilemmas
affecting every aspect of the Afghan life including the price of
the currency of the Afghans.
One of the reasons for this situation was
the political uncertainty and the lack of recognition of the
Taleban government by the international community. This had
caused the opposition led by Mr. Burhanuddin Rabbani to claim
legal rights over the official government of Afghanistan.
Although his government lacking a physical seat for a very long
time seemed no more than a phantom or a shadow government, it
capitalized on the international non-recognition of the Taleban
and went ahead and placed order for printing of the Afghani. In
this connection the New York Times on May 2, 2002 wrote: “ The
culprit, according to Mr. Ahadi, is the murky relationship
between what was the Northern Alliance and a Russian-Swiss
company that for years held exclusive rights to print Afghan
money.”
Mr. Anwarul Haq Ahadi, a political science
scholar living in the United States, recently married to a
veteran Afghan women’s right leader and politician Fatima
Gailani, was picked up by the Interim Authority to serve as the
Governor General of D’Afghanistan Bank, the country’s equivalent
of the Treasury. The company he has referred to is Appleline
Ltd. that has had the exclusive right to printing of the Afghan
money for many years. The company recognized the Burhanuddin
Rabbani government as the official Afghan authority and complied
with its wishes. It, over many years, printed several trillion
Afghanis that to a great extent helped finance the internal war
in Afghanistan.
Even after the toppling down of the Taleban
government until the establishment of Karzai’s Interim
Authority, the Northern Alliance warlords continued to receive
millions of Afghanis freshly printed on orders of their
government. One account puts this amount to be around $8.0
million worth of Afghanis. Although with the establishment of
the new administration the price of the Dollar against the
Afghani fell somewhat initially, yet it began to drop again.
Another factor in the fall of the price of
the Afghani is the fact that during the long internal conflict
in the country, depending on their affiliations with Russia and
Iran, many war lords printed their own money which is similar in
all features, but with minor differences in markings. This
situation, too, has affected the money market in the country and
abroad especially in Pakistan.
But Afghanistan, on the verge of its
greatest reconstruction era and at a time that it has welcomed
back between 300,000 to 400,000 of its refugees from Iran and
Pakistan, needs a viable currency. Apparently the Afghani as it
is today cannot respond to meet the need, as it is subject to
use and abuse by a variety of warlords and their
establishments.
Also, the time is ripe to cut the war
mongering characteristics of the Afghani and introduce its new
and proper use for the reconstruction of a devastated land.
Furthermore, the influence of the warlords over the Afghan
currency should be cut out.
For this purpose, perhaps specialist
opinions should be invited and issues such as a temporary
adoption of the Dollar until a solution for the Afghani, or
abolishing of the currency currently in use and replacing it
with a new Afghani note should be considered. All of this should
be done as soon as possible and before further political gains
could be claimed using the Afghani by warlords for their
personal aggrandizement. There is a greater danger from the use
of the Afghani for political purposes in the threshold of the
country’s fateful Loya Jirga than from the guns.