Hikmat Noori is an Afghan journalist reporting on the conflict, politics, development and culture in Afghanistan.
Last week, in what was already a year of disbelief and betrayal for the Afghan people, U.S. President Joe Biden signed an executive order to freeze, consolidate and redistribute more than US$7-billion in Afghan government assets that the country’s central bank, Da Afghanistan Bank, had deposited in the Federal Reserve Bank in New York before the Taliban takeover.
Mr. Biden’s executive order initiates the transfer of US$3.5-billion of the seized assets to a trust fund to support the needs of the Afghan people, but also set out that the rest would remain in the United States and be “subject to ongoing litigation by U.S. victims of terrorism.” A group representing some of the families of Americans who died in al-Qaeda’s terror attacks on Sept. 11, 2001 – the incident that triggered the U.S.’s war in and occupation of Afghanistan – had filed a claim for money from the Taliban. Now, the U.S. court system will decide whether these seized funds will go to those families.
Since the start of the Taliban siege of Kabul and the fall of the Afghan government last summer, there has been much debate on the fate of the frozen reserves. Many Afghans – including members of the Taliban – have been campaigning for the release of the funds. Others have advised caution, urging the U.S. to hold the funds until a system can be devised to disburse them responsibly to the Afghan people. The need for vigilance is particularly keen given the dilemma faced by international governments and agencies trying to support Afghans: They need to do so while bypassing the Taliban government and insurgents from the Haqqani network, a Sunni Islamist militant organization.
But while it’s understandable that the U.S. would not want the money to end up in their hands, the funds still represent the reserves of a country going through an awful humanitarian crisis, with reports of widespread starvation, according to the United Nations. Having largely survived on international aid, Afghanistan now finds itself in a full-fledged state of economic calamity after a sudden withdrawal of financial support from western governments and organizations.
Experts have weighed in on the damage that depleting Afghan currency could cause to the national economy. “The Afghan economy relies heavily on imports, which constitutes about 90 per cent of total trade. If we lose these foreign reserves, it will cause inflation in the markets, that will impact the exchange rate pushing the currency into a free fall,“ Khan Afzal Hadawal, the former acting governor of the country’s central bank, told me in an interview. He also warned that the reserves were helping keep the Afghan currency stable even amid the continuing crisis: “It will be a catastrophe if a part of the reserves is given away, and common Afghans will suffer.”
And yet, the potential battle over half of the Afghan government’s reserves could sow needless division. Andrew Maloney, a U.S. lawyer representing some relatives of the victims of the 9/11 tragedy, has even argued that families should be compensated from Afghan reserves because “the Afghan people did not stand up to the Taliban when they had an opportunity.”
This isn’t the complete truth. Afghan civilians played no role in the 9/11 tragedy; not a single bomber on any of the planes that struck the U.S. in September, 2001, was an Afghan national. Instead, Afghans were among the most trusted allies of the west, and when the U.S. invaded the country to take down a Taliban government that offered shelter to al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, the Afghan people were the ones who joined them in battle, retaking district after district with the support of the Western coalition.
In the end, it was the U.S. government that, in 2020, negotiated with the Taliban – a group on the U.S.’s terror list. That deal, negotiated without Afghans at the table, even promised to release 5,000 Taliban prisoners, further destabilizing the country. The U.S.’s pre-withdrawal actions empowered the Taliban and left us vulnerable, and now Afghans are being hunted in the streets and starving.
Afghans and U.S. families of victims of terror should understand that we are in fact much alike. If we were to speak directly to each other, we would find common ground in shared grief. No other country on this planet can empathize with their loss as much as we do.
More than 241,000 Afghans have died over the past 20 years of the U.S. occupation, many because of the support they provided to Western allies; countless others, including young children, have been maimed in the crossfire. Every Afghan family, across the breadth of our country, has a story of loss, including mine.
Despite the persecution and the insults, Afghans continue to fight. Many brave Afghan women, who lost the most during the Taliban siege, still take to streets and face armed fighters, shouting slogans of “Work, Food, Freedom.” The youth of Afghanistan is mobilizing civil and political movements that reflect the values of freedom and democracy of their American allies.
Their struggle against an oppressive, extremist regime is already fraught with challenges. But it should be familiar to any patriotic American who espouses their constitutional values of life, liberty, economic freedom and the pursuit of happiness.
Taking away our country’s reserves as if they were the spoils of war, and thereby further damaging the Afghan economy, will only hurt everyday Afghans. I do not believe the families of those lost on Sept. 11 would wish to do this, because we are still allies – and victims of the same war.