Afghans gather in Kabul on Saturday to protest against a US decision to divide Afghanistan's frozen assets. (HUSSEIN MALLA / AP)
Even if the US government does not recognize the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, it does not have the legitimacy to dispose of money belonging to the Afghan people.
The executive order US President Joe Biden signed on Friday that authorizes the United States to spend half the $7 billion in foreign exchange assets of the Afghan central bank, which it froze after the Afghan government it supported collapsed in August following its military withdrawal from the country, to compensate families of the victims of the Sept 11 attacks and the other half on humanitarian relief in Afghanistan, is shameless.
Even if, as the US government claims, most of the money is assistance funds from the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, that does not change the ownership of it. The move is callous to the point of viciousness given the suffering of the Afghan people as the country's economy and healthcare systems are on the brink of collapse.
Not to mention that there is no justification for using the funds to compensate US families of the 9/11 attacks, since, as the US investigation shows, none of the 19 hijackers affiliated with the militant Islamist group al-Qaida, which was responsible for the attacks, was from Afghanistan.
The families of the 9/11 victims have the world's sympathy. But it is the US government that should pay them compensation.
The US' invasion of Afghanistan following the attacks was partially to divert domestic attention from the government's failures to forestall the attacks and ease the pressure on it. It is the same case as it tries to pass the buck to China in an attempt to cover up its ineffectual responses to the outbreak of the COVID-19 at home that has taken about 920,000 US lives.
Ironically, the humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan that the US administration decides to use half of the Afghan money to address is largely a result of the US invasion of the country and the failed "democracy" experiment it carried out in it over the past 20 years, which claimed more than 30,000 civilian lives and left 11 million people war refugees.
That the Afghan central bank, which is now controlled by the Taliban that Washington abhors, stores the money in the US by no means entitles the US to grab the funds. It is the Afghan people who are the legitimate owners of the money and have the right to decide how it is used.
Any disposal of the funds by the US without authorization of the Afghan people is simply robbery, no matter how the administration tries to sugarcoat it.