KABUL, Afghanistan — Many Afghans said they were outraged by the Biden administration’s decision to divert billions in frozen assets from the Afghan central bank to American families of 9/11 victims, as Afghanistan hurtles deeper into economic catastrophe.
The move, which would effectively bankrupt the country’s central bank, adds to the growing animosity that many Afghans have felt toward the United States since the troop withdrawal that paved the way for the Taliban’s takeover of the country in August.
“It is a cruel act and a betrayal of the rights of the Afghan people,” Fazl Ahmad, a shopkeeper in Kabul, the capital, said Saturday.
After the Taliban seized power, the Biden administration froze the roughly $7 billion in central bank assets that the now-defunct Western-backed government had on deposit at the Federal Reserve Bank in New York, amid uncertainty over who had the legal authority to gain access to the account.
On Friday, the Biden administration began a process aimed at letting relatives of victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks who have legal claims against the Taliban pursue $3.5 billion of those assets. The Taliban sheltered al-Qaida leaders who planned the Sept. 11 attacks during the Taliban’s previous rule of Afghanistan.
The White House said a roughly equal amount would be steered toward humanitarian aid for Afghanistan, which is facing one of the world’s worst humanitarian catastrophes.
But for many Afghans, the decision to put half of the assets into American hands amplified frustrations about the stranglehold that the United States has had on the country’s financial system since it withdrew its troops.
For months, the Afghan economy has teetered on the brink of disaster. The millions of dollars in aid that propped up the Western-backed government is gone, and U.S. sanctions have crippled the banking system and impeded humanitarian organizations’ ability to deliver aid.
On Saturday, the Afghan central bank demanded in a statement that the Biden administration reverse its decision. Some Taliban officials went further in condemning the move.
The White House’s decision drew criticism from human rights groups, lawyers and financial experts who warned that the move could gut the country’s central bank for years to come, crippling its ability to establish monetary policy and manage the country’s balance of payments.This article originally appeared in .
