Concerns about the impact of sanctions on civilians have generally failed to bring about concrete legal limits on the use of sanctions as a tool of foreign policy. However, as the ongoing saga concerning the Afghan central bank’s assets indicates, they have succeeded in something much more fundamental: they have legitimized the United States’ use of sanctions as a tool of undoing and re-assembling the sovereignty of a postcolonial state. In particular, progressive legal scholars need to pay attention to how the United States has anchored its appropriation of the authority and functions of another, nominally sovereign state, in the name of providing humanitarian relief to Afghans.