President Joe Biden issued an executive order to unfreeze $7 billion in funds from Afghanistan’s central bank, which was frozen late last year following the country’s takeover by the Taliban, on Feb. 11. The executive order also allows for the $7 billion to be deposited to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York to be split evenly — $3.5 billion each — between humanitarian relief for Afghan people and American victims of 9/11.
This decision is both unexpected and horrendous. During a time when Afghanistan is facing one of its worst humanitarian crises, the U.S. government has the audacity to take money that rightly belongs to Afghanistan and reallocate half of it for U.S. interests, even after all the damage the U.S. caused by engaging in the 20-year war in Afghanistan. The U.S. coalition’s departure from the country was almost immediately followed by the collapse of the Afghan government and the Taliban’s invasion.
Therefore, the entire $7 billion should go directly toward humanitarian relief in Afghanistan. The funds were left on deposit at the Federal Reserve Bank in New York by Afghanistan’s central bank after the Afghan government was overthrown by the Taliban in August 2021. A former U.S. Treasury Department official in Afghanistan described the central bank reserves as a “rainy day fund” for the Afghan people. While it’s unclear who has legal authority to access the account now that the former government has dissolved, the funds, mostly made up of foreign exchange funds and Western aid, had accumulated over the last two decades. Additionally, half a billion dollars in the total fund are also the reserves of commercial banks in Afghanistan, which includes the savings of Afghan citizens who are simultaneously experiencing a collapsing economy, starvation, disease and violence.
End Afghan Starvation Founder Naser Shahalemi noted to NPR that to dismantle a federal reserve in development for 20 years would be detrimental to Afghanistan’s future economy.
“Yeah. I mean, the way that they divided this money was absolutely illogical because first we need to decipher who has the right to decide another country’s national assets and federal reserve,” Shahalemi said.
Imagine being from any country that’s not the U.S. and watching this situation unfold, as the U.S. government takes hold of foreign assets for the first time ever and solely decides how to distribute it. Any other country would see an imperial superpower, once again, taking advantage of its global position to further exploit the resources and economy of another country.
Since the Taliban takeover in August 2021, Afghanistan’s economy has been rapidly collapsing both due to the Taliban’s economic policies and the halt of foreign aid which has made up half of the government’s budget. As the U.S. and its Western allies don’t recognize the Taliban as the legitimate government of Afghanistan, the country is largely cut off from the international economy, further contributing to their growing humanitarian crisis.
“Because of the sanctions, [Afghans have] been locked away from their own money. And if that happened in America, people would be in outrage,” Shahalemi said to NPR.
According to the World Food Programme, 22.8 million people, more than half of the country’s population, are now facing food insecurity, and 8.7 million are facing emergency-level food insecurity. With the economy collapsing, the inflation rates on food have made food less accessible. The situation will only worsen from here. The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) projects that by mid-2022, 97% of Afghans could fall into poverty.
Afghanistan has also been suffering from a measles endemic since 2021. According to the World Health Organization, January cases have been at its highest in the past four years with 35,319 measles cases and 156 deaths reported. This does not include the amount of current unreported cases, so these numbers can be expected to continue increasing in coming weeks.
Biden’s support of allocating $3.5 billion of the funds to 9/11 victims didn’t just come out of nowhere. After the Taliban takeover, 9/11 plaintiffs have been asking for the Afghan funds because they believe the Taliban had a role in supporting the 9/11 attacks. While Sept. 11 was a tragic day for the families and friends of those who lost loved ones in the attack, there is a massive misconception among the general public that the Taliban or the Afghan people have any connection to the attacks.
Al Qaeda is the terrorist group responsible for the 9/11 attacks. They are a completely separate group from the Taliban organization. In Craig Whitlock’s 2021 book “The Afghanistan Papers,” Whitlock highlighted how the Bush administration and American media outlets wrongfully merged the two following Sept. 11.
“The Taliban protected bin Laden and built a strong alliance with al-Qaeda, but Afghans did not play a role in the 9/11 hijackings and there is no evidence they had advance knowledge of the attacks,” Whitlock wrote.
The interchangeability of al-Qaeda and the Taliban to many Americans has been a lasting effect of the U.S. government’s portrayal of the two in the war on terror. Additionally, according to the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, none of the 9/11 hijackers were even Afghans — 12 out of the 13 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia and one was from the United Arab Emirates.
Adam Weinstein, a research fellow at the Quincy Institute, served as a U.S. marine in Afghanistan and shared with the Guardian his belief that the Afghan people have been caught in the middle of the U.S. war on terror and the Taliban.
“The idea that overnight, the central bank reserves went from belonging to the Afghan people to being the transferable property of the United States is nothing short of colonial,” Weinstein said.
With Afghanistan facing a humanitarian crisis in dire need of relief, Biden must reconsider his order to allocate half of the funds from Afghanistan’s central bank to victims of 9/11. The U.S. needs to make the responsible and moral decision to devote all $7 billion to Afghanistan humanitarian relief. Otherwise, the U.S. is once again failing Afghanistan and allowing millions to suffer even further.
Erika Cao is an Opinion Staff Writer. She can be reached at caoea@uci.edu.