WASHINGTON, United States — US President
Joe Biden seized $7 billion in assets belonging to the previous
Afghan government Friday, aiming to split the funds between victims of the 9/11 attacks and
desperately needed aid for post-war Afghanistan.
اضافة اعلان
The move drew an angry response from the country’s
new leaders the Taliban, which branded the seizure a “theft” and a sign of US
“moral decay.”
Biden’s unusual
action saw the conflicting, highly sensitive issues of a humanitarian tragedy
in
Afghanistan, the fundamentalist Taliban fight for recognition, and the push
for justice from families impacted by the September 11, 2001 attacks collide,
with billions of dollars at stake.
The first stage was simple: Biden formally blocked
the assets in an executive order signed Friday.
The money — which a US official said largely stems
from foreign assistance once sent to help the now-defunct Western-backed Afghan
government — had been stuck in the
New York Federal Reserve ever since last
year’s Taliban victory.
The insurgency, which fought US-led forces for 20
years and now controls the whole country, has not been recognized by Washington
or any Western countries, mostly over its human rights record.
However, with appalling poverty gripping
Afghanistan, Washington is seeking ways to assist, while side-stepping the
Taliban.
The White House said Biden will seek to funnel $3.5
billion of the frozen funds into a humanitarian aid trust “for the benefit of
the Afghan people and for Afghanistan’s future.”
The trust fund will manage the aid in a way that
bypasses
Taliban authorities, a senior US official told reporters, countering
likely criticism in Washington that Biden’s administration is inadvertently
boosting its former enemy.
Aside from the new plan, “the US remains the single
largest donor of humanitarian aid in Afghanistan,” the senior official said.
More than $516 million has been donated since
mid-August last year, the official said. The money is distributed among
non-governmental organizations.
The Taliban fumed over
Washington’s move.
“The theft and seizure of money held/frozen by the
United States of the Afghan people represents the lowest level of human and
moral decay of a country and a nation,” Taliban spokesman Mohammad Naeem said
on Twitter.
Failure and victory are common throughout history,
“but the greatest and most shameful defeat is when moral defeat combines with
military defeat,” Naeem added.
9/11 victims seek compensation
The fate of the other $3.5
billion is also complex.
Families of people killed or injured in the 9/11
attacks on New York, the Pentagon, and a fourth hijacked airliner that crashed
in Pennsylvania have long struggled to find ways to extract compensation from
Al-Qaeda and others responsible.
In US lawsuits, groups of victims won default
judgements against
Al-Qaeda and the Taliban, which hosted the shadowy terrorist
group at the time of the attacks, but were unable to collect any money. They
will now have the opportunity to sue for access to the frozen Afghan assets.
Those “assets would remain in the US and are subject
to ongoing litigation by US victims of terrorism. Plaintiffs will have a full
opportunity to have their claims heard in court,” the White House said.
A senior official called the situation
“unprecedented.”
There are “$7 billion of assets in the
US that are
owned by a country where there is no government that we recognize. I think
we’re acting responsibly to ensure that a portion of that money be used to
benefit the people of the country,” he said.
And the US plaintiffs related to 9/11 will “have
their day in court.”
Some relatives of 9/11 attack victims however
expressed disappointment with Biden’s move, saying Afghanistan should retain
access to the money.
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