Anger Rises Over Money Seizure

New American ‘Atrocity’ Against Afghans

Date: 13 February 2022 - 21:55

News ID: ۱۰۰۰۱۶

KABUL, Afghanistan (Dispatches) -- Afghanistan’s former president on Sunday called a White House order to unfreeze $3.5 billion in Afghan assets held in the U.S. for families of 9/11 victims an atrocity against the Afghan people.
Former President Hamid Karzai at a packed news conference sought the help of Americans to press President Joe Biden to rescind last week’s order. He called it “unjust and unfair,” saying Afghans have also been victims of Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.
U.S. administration officials said on Friday they planned to use half of the Afghan central bank’s $7 billion in frozen assets on U.S. soil for alleged humanitarian aid and set aside the rest to possibly satisfy lawsuits over the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.
“Withholding money or seizing money from the people of Afghanistan in their name is unjust and unfair and an atrocity against Afghan people,” Karzai said.
Alleged Sept. 11 victims and their families have legal claims against the Taliban and the $7 billion in the U.S. banking system. The $3.5 billion was set aside for a U.S. court to decide whether it can be used to settle claims by families of 9/11 victims. U.S. courts would also have to sign off before the release of humanitarian assistance money.
We “ask the U.S. courts to do the opposite, to return the Afghan money back to the Afghan people,” said Karzai. “This money does not belong to any government; this money belongs to the people of Afghanistan.”
Meanwhile, U.S. President Joe Biden’s order calls for the $3.5 billion allocated to humanitarian aid to be put into a trust and allegedly be used to assist Afghans, bypassing their Taliban rulers.
But Karzai demanded all $7 billion be returned to Afghanistan’s central bank to further its monetary policy. He argued against giving Afghan reserves to international aid organizations to provide humanitarian aid.
“You give us our own money so that it can be spent for those foreigners who come here, to pay their salaries, to give it to (non-governmental organizations),” he said.
Afghanistan’s economy is teetering on the brink of collapse after international money stopped coming into the country with the arrival in mid-August of the Taliban. Last month, the United Nations made a $5 billion appeal for Afghanistan. The UN warns that 1 million children are in danger of starving and 90% of Afghans live below the poverty level of just $1.90 a day.
Karzai was Afghanistan’s first president after the U.S. invasion of the country in 2001. He served until 2014 before Ashraf Ghani, who fled the country on Aug. 15, leaving the doors open for the Taliban takeover of Kabul.
Karzai spoke to a packed press conference inside his sprawling compound in the capital of Kabul. Dozens of Afghanistan’s Pashto- and Persian-language journalists jockeyed for space in a second-floor conference room with more than a dozen television cameras.
“We, as Afghans, and the current acting Islamic government must do our best to not give America or any other country any excuse to be against us,” he said.
Anger has been growing in Afghanistan since Friday’s White House announcement. Demonstrators marched again in Kabul on Sunday demanding the money be returned to Afghanistan. However, the Taliban, who have also condemned Biden’s order, dispersed protesters as they tried to gather near the city’s Eid Gah mosque.
Afghanistan’s central bank, Da Afghanistan Bank (DAB), also criticized Washington’s confiscation, saying its assets had been invested in the United States in line with international practices, and belonged to the people of Afghanistan.
“DAB considers the latest decision of USA on blocking FX (foreign exchange) reserves and allocating them to irrelevant purposes, injustice to the people of Afghanistan,” the central bank said in a statement.
“(DAB) will never accept if the FX reserves of Afghanistan is paid under the name of compensation or humanitarian assistance to others and wants the reversal of the decision and release of all FX reserves of Afghanistan,” it added.
The frozen funding combined with sanctions and a drop off in development funding have sent the country’s economy into freefall, unleashing a humanitarian crisis.