The speed of the Taliban’s capture of Afghanistan last weekend has left the West scrambling to curtail the Islamist militants’ grip on the country. Military action has been all but ruled out and instead the United States and its NATO allies have turned to financial warfare.

US President Joe Biden and the Federal Reserve have frozen billions of dollars in Afghan currency reserves held in the US. Nearly $9 billion (€7.7 billion) in assets are kept in the US and other countries, including $1.2 billion in gold and more than $300 million in international currencies.

In anticipation of the fall