US places financial sanctions on the Taliban leadership

Washington: In a move that appears to be a follow-up on the recently concluded international donors conference in Kabul, where the international community resolved to persist with their efforts to defeat al Qaeda and Taliban moves to take over Afghnaistan, the Obama administration has imposed financial sanctions against some of key fund managers of the infamous Haqqani Network and the Taliban leadership.

The Haqqani Network is a battle-hardened pro-Taliban and al Qaeda affiliate group operating in Afghanistan since the time of the Soviet occupation in the1980s.

The move is also likely to put a spanner in the works of the Pakistani Army to install Haqqani Network leaders as their proxies in any government of reconciliation in Kabul, if and when one such is formed.

Among those sanctioned Thursday are Nasiruddin Haqqani, an emissary for the Haqqani Network and brother of Sirajuddin Haqqani who leads the group alongside his father, Jalaluddin. Other two sanctioned are Gul Agha Ishakzai, the head of the Taliban's financial commission and Amir Abdullah, the former treasurer to captured Taliban leader Mullah Abdul Ghani Barader.

The sanctions placed on the three leaders as terrorists are intended to deprive them of assets they need to fund their terror operations, said Adam J Szubin, director of Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control.

"We will continue to aggressively work to expose and dismantle the financial networks of terrorist groups in support of the president's goal of a stable Afghanistan," he said.