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The Biden Administration may harbour the belief that it has a right to do with this money what it pleases as a large part of it may have been US financial assistance to Afghanistan. Cut this any way, the Biden Administration’s decision to take away half of the 7 billion dollars worth of assets kept in deposits by Da Afghanistan Bank at the Federal Reserve Bank in New York, as reparations to be paid to the victims of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, leaves a bad taste. The Taliban had tried to access these funds as soon as they seized power in August 2021. But the Federal Bank barred any withdrawals because the Taliban is a sanctioned terrorist entity and remains unrecognised as the legitimate Afghan government. Now, by an executive order last week, President Joe Biden has frozen the entire amount. Half that money is expected to go towards compensating some victims of the September, 2001 attacks in New York who have won lawsuits against the Taliban, should the courts decide to honour their claims. The other half is to be funnelled into Afghanistan in a way that it helps the Afghan people who are right now trying to eke out an existence through a massive humanitarian crisis, without any of the cash falling into Taliban hands. Aside from the fact that the Taliban and many in its regime are designated under the Taliban Sanctions Committee and no bank is supposed to deal with them, one of the reasons given for these funds not being made available to the new regime in Kabul was that the money belonged to the people of Afghanistan. Leave aside the moral questions around pocketing someone else’s money parked at your place for safekeeping, confiscating it as compensation against acts in which the Taliban was complicit is tacit acknowledgement that the money belongs to the group.
The Biden Administration may harbour the belief that it has a right to do with this money what it pleases as a large part of it may have been US financial assistance to Afghanistan. The country was after all entirely dependent on the international community to help it transition from a war-ravaged disaster to a functioning democracy. But the Afghan people have been made to pay three times over already for this so called transition that wasn’t. First, when the US and NATO troops fought on their soil against the Taliban. By one count, more than 71,000 Afghans died in this two decade long war. If that was not collective punishment enough, they were punished again when the US simply upped and left when it became clear it was not winning this war, leaving the people to fend for themselves. And for a third time, even before Biden’s egregious decision, as the world punished the Taliban for seizing power, it was the Afghan people caught in the crossfire again, without money or enough to eat.
The Biden Administration need not make it worse than it is already by taking the money at a time of great hardship for the Afghan people. It would be one more mistake on the heels of many others in Afghanistan.
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