WASHINGTON: The US Congress passed the national defence bill for 2023 this week that will effectively end the delivery of US humanitarian aid and currency to Afgha­nistan using Defence Department resources.

It also closes the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and limits the use of US weapons in Yemen. The House Appropriations Committee approved the fiscal year 2023 defence bill earlier this week on a 32-26 vote.

The bill provides total funding of $761.681 billion, an increase of $32.207 billion above 2022.

Democratic lawmakers, however, have introduced a number of amendments to the bill, aiming to limit military support to Saudi Arabia, one of the largest purchasers of US weapons. The measures would establish boun­daries on the use of US weapons in Yemen’s civil war and would highlight Congress’s concern over broader human rights concerns.

Detention facility at Guantanamo Bay closed

One of the measures also mentions the 2018 killing at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul of Saudi journalist and The Washi­ngton Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi.

But the bill also underlines American lawmakers’ support for a long-term US engagement in Ukraine to undo the Russian occupation. The security assistance to Ukraine includes resources for training, equipment, weapons, supplies, services, salaries and stipends, and intelligence support to the Ukra­inian military and national security forces.

Before the final vote on the bill, Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, a Muslim Democrat from Minnesota, introduced an eleventh-hour amendment seeking to prevent a collapse of US humanitarian aid to millions of Afghans.

The amendment came in response to language in the military spending bill that prohibits Defence Department funds from being used to “transport currency or other items of value to the Taliban, the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, or any subsidiary, agent, or instrumentality of either the Taliban or the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.”

This would effectively halt American aid to the war-torn country. It will also block US Defence Department planes from transporting nearly any good — including food and lifesaving medical supplies — to Afghanistan, where tens of millions of people currently face starvation and medicine shortages.

The Defence Department provides security and logistics support for aid flights and facilitates the transportation of currency to Afghanistan. The new law would complicate the process of returning about $3.5 billion of Afghan assets that Washington intends to release.

Congresswoman Omar’s amendment would have granted President Biden the ability to waive the prohibition on using Defence Department funding to transport aid if he recognised a pressing humanitarian need or if doing so would further the national interests of the US. The proposed amendment, however, was rejected.

While Ilham Omar’s effort failed, other Democrats are hopeful that they would be able to constrain the Biden administration’s ability to send weapons and enter security agreements with Saudi Arabia even as President Biden tries to strengthen ties with the country.

“An American resident, a columnist for The Washington Post, and my constituent was — at the direction of the crown prince of Saudi Arabia — brutally murdered and dismembered in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, a little over three years ago,” Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.) told The Hill newspaper while explaining why he was trying to limit US involvement with Riyadh.

Published in Dawn, July 15th, 2022