Biden orders use of frozen Afghan funds for humanitarian aid and 9/11 victims

President Joe Biden signed an executive order this Friday that allows the United States to dispose of 7,000 million dollars (about 6,142 million euros) from the Central Bank of Afghanistan deposited in US financial institutions and that were frozen after the return to power last Taliban summer, according to a White House statement.

This is an unusual measure, with which Washington takes possession of assets from another State, which will be deposited in an account at the New York Federal Reserve.

The order stipulates that the frozen assets be divided into $3.5 billion for humanitarian aid in Afghanistan and the same amount for a fund earmarked for ongoing litigation by victims of terrorism in the United States as a result of the Al Qaeda attacks on the September 11, 2001. The presidential decision opens a process that will have to face the difficulty of preventing aid to the Afghan population from falling into the hands of the Taliban;

Nor will the path be easy for the victims of 9/11 "to make their voices heard" before the US justice system, according to a senior White House official in a telephone conference with the press.

“It is very important to be able to dispose of 3,500 million dollars and guarantee that they are used for the benefit of the Afghan people,” the same source stressed.

Regarding the money allocated to the victims of Al Qaeda in the US, he acknowledged that it is a "legally complicated" situation and that this announcement is just the beginning of a procedure that could last months.

The Biden Administration insisted that the money will not go directly to the Taliban, but will be in a trust fund and that the US authorities will give certain periodic amounts to international NGOs for aid distribution in Afghanistan.

Since last August 15 Kabul fell into the hands of the Taliban regime and US troops chaotically left the country after 20 years of presence, the radicals have demanded access to money deposited abroad.

The United Nations and several humanitarian organizations have been pressuring governments around the world, especially the United States, for months to unblock the Afghan funds that were frozen after the new rise of the Taliban.

Before these took power, the Afghan Central Bank had deposited 9,000 million dollars abroad.

Of that amount, 7,000 are in the US and the rest in countries such as Switzerland, Germany and the United Arab Emirates.

According to experts quoted by

, it is feared that the White House measure will further paralyze the diminished Afghan Central Bank, given that "drainage" of a large part of its international capital will hinder the efforts of the Afghan institution to stabilize the currency and prices in the country.

These 7,000 million dollars that are expected to be distributed include currencies, bonds and gold, accumulated over the last 20 years as a surplus of economic aid provided by the United States and other countries to the Afghan government, and are considered a kind of "emergency fund". ”.

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