The Ministry of Economy said that efforts are underway to ease the economic sanctions on Afghanistan imposed after the Islamic Emirate swept into power following the rapid collapse of the western-backed government.

Deputy Minister of Economy, Abdul Latif Nazari, said that the freezing of Afghan assets in American and European Banks has triggered an economic crisis that affects the life of Afghans.

“The Islamic Emirate is making efforts to convince the sanction-imposing countries to not seek their political goals through economic means because the people of Afghanistan are being affected by this,” he said.

This comes as the Russian Foreign Ministry’s Spokesperson, Maria Zakharova, said that the West had been destroying Afghanistan for years and in the end stole its money.

“We strongly urge Westerners to fully unblock the accounts of the (Afghan) Central Bank as soon as possible. We believe that such half-measures as the creation of an Afghan Trust Fund from stolen funds...All these half-measures are hypocritical. They are insufficient for a full-scale reconstruction of the Afghan economy and infrastructure.” Zakharova was quoted by the Anadolu Agency.

This comes as economists said that the existing sanctions have increased unemployment in the country.

“More than 400,000 to 500,000 people are engaging in markets. But we unfortunately see that they don’t find jobs. We see that employment has decreased in Afghanistan,” said Mansour Hedayat, an economist.

This comes as Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau mentioned the need to provide aid to the people of Afghanistan but didn’t give a timeline of when Canadian aid groups would be able to respond to a humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan.

“We know how important it is to support the people of Afghanistan,” Trudeau responded during a news conference. “We will continue to look at how we can help.”

After the fall of the former government, more than $9 billion of Afghanistan’s Central Fund in foreign reserves were frozen.