US Announces Fund to Benefit Afghan Economy—Using Stolen Afghan Bank Reserves
Rights organizations on Thursday responded to a new Biden administration plan to use $3.5 billion in U.S.-held Afghan funds to “help mitigate the economic challenges” facing the people of Afghanistan by saying the proposal was “better than keeping that money locked away in a U.S. vault” but must only be the first step in returning $7 billion in stolen money to Afghanistan.
Following months of outcry from economists, peace groups, and Afghan rights campaigners, the U.S. Treasury Department said Wednesday that it is coordinating with international partners, including the Swiss government, to establish what it called the “Afghan Fund.”
The fund will include “$3.5 billion of Afghan central bank reserves for the benefit of the people of Afghanistan while keeping them out of the hands of the Taliban and other malign actors,” the Treasury Department said, and will make “targeted disbursements of that $3.5 billion to help provide greater stability to the Afghan economy.”
The Afghan economic justice group Unfreeze Afghanistan said that “the freezing of this money has devastated Afghanistan’s economy and contributed to one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world,”
“Over the past year, the banks have carried complete lack of the cash, such that Afghans have been unable to withdraw their own money for paying basic household expenses or running their businesses,” said the group. “We believe the Afghan people would ultimately get best assistance if these funds are quickly available for Central Bank functions.”
The money being placed in the Afghan Fund represents half of the Da Afghanistan Bank (DAB) reserves, stored in the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, which were seized by the U.S. earlier this year even as Afghanistan faced a worsening hunger crisis.
The Biden administration announced announced earlier this year the plan to retain the other $3.5 billion for the families of victims of the September 11, 2001 attacks to settle legal judgments against the Taliban—a proposal that several families objected to, saying the money belonged to the people of Afghanistan.
Last month, a U.S. federal judge concluded that the families do not have the right to claim the funds.
On Wednesday, U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman said the U.S. is taking an “important, concrete step forward in ensuring that additional resources enable the decrease in suffering and improve economic stability for the people of Afghanistan while continuing to hold the Taliban accountable.”
The Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) denounced the Biden administration’s statement as “pure spin,” noting that the $3.5 billion in Afghan funds is not the United States’ money to disburse.
Since the U.S. has withheld the $7 billion from the DAB, Afghanistan’s humanitarian crisis has steadily grown more dire, with six million people facing famine and an estimated three million children suffering from acute malnourishment.
Originally published at Commondreams.org.
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