Former Afghan president Hamid Karzai on Sunday called a White House order to unfreeze US$3.5 billion in Afghan assets held in the US for families of those killed in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks an atrocity against the Afghan people.
At a packed news conference, Karzai sought the help of Americans, particularly the families of the thousands killed in the 9/11 terrorist attacks, to press US President Joe Biden to rescind last week’s order.
He called it “unjust and unfair,” saying Afghans have also been victims of former al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.
Photo: EPA-EFE
Bin Laden was brought to Afghanistan by Afghan warlords after being expelled from Sudan in 1996. Those same warlords would later ally with the US-led coalition to oust the Taliban in 2001. However, it was Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar who refused to hand over Bin Laden to the US after the devastating 9/11 attacks that killed thousands.
“The people of Afghanistan share the pain of the American people, share the pain of the families and loved ones of those who died, who lost their lives in the tragedy of September 11,” Karzai said.
“We commiserate with them [but] Afghan people are as much victims as those families who lost their lives... Withholding money or seizing money from the people of Afghanistan in their name is unjust and unfair and an atrocity against Afghan people,” he added.
Biden’s order, signed on Friday, freed US$7 billion in Afghan assets currently held in the US, to be divided between 9/11 victims and humanitarian aid to Afghans.
Sept. 11 victims and their families have legal claims against the Taliban and the US$7 billion in the US banking system. The US$3.5 billion was set aside for a US court to decide whether it can be used to settle claims by families of 9/11 victims. US courts would also have to sign off before the release of humanitarian assistance money.
We “ask the US courts to do the opposite, to return the Afghan money back to the Afghan people,” Karzai said. “This money does not belong to any government... This money belongs to the people of Afghanistan.”
Meanwhile, Biden’s order calls for the US$3.5 billion allocated to humanitarian aid to be put into a trust and be used to assist Afghans, bypassing their Taliban rulers.
However, Karzai demanded all US$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 August last year of the Taliban. Last month, the UN made a US$5 billion appeal for Afghanistan. The UN said that 1 million children are in danger of starving and 90 percent of Afghans live below the poverty level of just US$1.90 a day.
Karzai was Afghanistan’s first democratically elected president after the US-led coalition ousted the Taliban in 2001. He served until 2014 before Ashraf Ghani, who fled the country on Aug. 15 last year, leaving the doors open for the Taliban takeover of Kabul.
Karzai was highly regarded as embracing all of Afghanistan’s many ethnic groups but his administration, like subsequent Afghan administrations, was dogged by charges of widespread corruption.
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