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KABUL: Hundreds of people spread on the streets of capital Kabul, where they protest the US President Joe Biden’s decision to move the $3.5 billion of roughly $7 billion remain in US banks.
Biden last Friday signed an executive order allowing the humanitarian organizations to get access to the $ 3.5 billion of Afghan assets as the country is gripped with various types of crisis.
A similar amount based on the order will be given to the victims of 9/11.
Biden’s decision faced strong reactions on the national and international levels. The Human Rights Watch said the assets being released already belong to the people of Afghanistan.
“Directing $3.5 billion to humanitarian assistance for Afghans may sound generous, but it should be remembered that the entire $7 billion already legally belonged to the Afghan people, said John Sifton, Asia Advocacy Director at Human Rights Watch. “And yet, even if the US gave it to a humanitarian trust fund, current restrictions on Afghanistan’s banking sector make it virtually impossible to send or spend the money inside the country.”
Talking to a press conference on Sunday, Former President Hamid Karzai called on Biden to reconsider his decision about the fate of the Afghan assets.
He told the reporters that al-Qaeda’s leader, Osama bin Laden came to Afghanistan from Pakistan and that he returned back to Pakistan and was killed there.
A number of Kabul citizens criticized the US president’s statement at a gathering in Kabul on Sunday organized by a group of “Afghan Shia scholars”.
AttaullahSadiq, head of the National Consensus of Freedom and Independence, said at the meeting that the 9/11 attacks were irrelevant to the Afghan people as they were neither planned nor carried out by Afghans.
“The United States considers itself a superpower in the world, but now it wants to use the money of the Afghan people for its own expenses,” he said, calling the US president’s order as cruel.
“The occupation is over; now is the era of independence; the people of Afghanistan are no longer oppressed; there will be no more proxy wars in Afghanistan, and all people are now united,” he said.
The Biden’s decision of Afghan assets faced backlashes by some American officials as well.
“There wasn’t a single Afghan among the hijackers. Meanwhile, we are giving BILLIONS of dollars to the govts of Saudi Arabia & Egypt who have direct ties to the 9/11 terrorists,” said US congresswoman, Ilhan Oma . “Even if this weren’t the case, punishing millions of starving ppl for these crimes is unconscionable.”
