Alghadeer TV Alghadeer TV
The Taliban government in Afghanistan has condemned as “theft” and a sign of “moral decay” a recent decision by the United States to use billions of dollars of frozen Afghan assets to compensate the claimants of the September 11, 2001 attacks.
The White House announced on Friday that the administration of US President Joe Biden plans to block half of the $7-billion Afghan funds frozen in the US banks to distribute among the families of the victims of the 9/11 attacks on American soil.
Washington also claimed that the other half would be allocated for humanitarian aid to Afghans suffering from the dire situation following the Taliban’s assuming of power in Afghanistan in August 2021.
Suhail Shaheen, the Taliban’s designated representative to the United Nations (UN), called for the entire amount to be unfrozen and kept under control of the Afghan Central Bank.
“The reserve is the property of the Afghanistan Bank and by extension, the property of the people of Afghanistan. We want the unfreezing of the entire amount as a reserve of the Afghanistan Bank,” Shaheen said.
The spokesman of the Taliban’s Doha office also blasted the US move in a tweet, saying, “Stealing and takeover of frozen money which belongs to the Afghan people by US shows the lowest level of human and moral decline of a country and a nation.”
The Biden administration has frozen the assets belonging to the Afghan Central Bank since the withdrawal of its occupation forces from the country in August 2021. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank have since then suspended activities in the war-ravaged country.
Many of the US allies and Western governments have also largely suspended their financial assistance to Afghanistan since the US troop withdrawal and the Taliban takeover.
Aid agencies and the UN have estimated that more than half of Afghanistan’s 38 million population is expected to face hunger this winter
