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We Must Remember the 9/11 War Lies
We can’t afford to let these lies go down the memory hole, like we have the other wars we were lied into.
Sep 11, 2023
Today is 9/11, the event that first brought America together and then was cynically exploited by George W. Bush and Dick Cheney to have a war against Iraq, followed by their illegal invasion of Afghanistan just a bit more than a year earlier.
Yet the media today (so far, anyway) is curiously silent about Bush and Cheney’s lies.
Given the costs of both these wars—and the current possibility of our being drawn deeper into conflict in both Ukraine and Taiwan—it’s an important moment to discuss our history of wars, both illegal and unnecessary, and those that are arguably essential to the survival of democracy in the world.
To be clear, I support U.S. involvement—and even an expanded U.S. involvement—in the defense of the Ukrainian democracy against Vladimir Putin’s Adolf-Hitler-grabs-Poland-like attack and mass slaughter of Ukrainian civilians. Had the world mobilized to stop Hitler when he invaded the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia in 1938 there almost certainly wouldn’t have been either the Holocaust or World War II, which is why Europe is so united in this effort.
Today’s reporting on the chaos in Afghanistan and the war to seize the Iraqi oil fields almost never mentions Bush’s and Cheney’s lies and ulterior motives in getting us into those wars in the first place.
If Putin succeeds in taking Ukraine, his administration has already suggested that both Poland and Moldova are next, with the Baltic states (Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia) also on the menu. That would almost certainly lead to war in Europe.
And China is watching: a Putin victory in Ukraine will encourage Xi Jinping to try to take Taiwan. Between the two—war in both Europe and the Pacific—we could find ourselves in the middle of World War III if Putin isn’t stopped now.
That said, essentially defensive military involvement like with Ukraine or in World War II has been the exception rather than the rule in American history. We’ve been far more likely to have presidents lie us into wars for their own personal and political gain than to defend ourselves or other democracies.
For example, after 9/11 in 2001 the Taliban that then ran Afghanistan offered to arrest Osama bin Laden, but Bush turned them down because he wanted to be a “wartime president” to have a “successful presidency.”
The Washington Post headline weeks after 9/11 put it succinctly: “Bush Rejects Taliban Offer On Bin Laden.” With that decision not to arrest and try bin Laden for his crime but instead to go to war, George W. Bush set the U.S. and Afghanistan on a direct path to disaster (but simultaneously set himself up for reelection in 2004 as a “wartime president”).
To further complicate things for Bush and Cheney, the 9/11 attacks were not planned, hatched, developed, practiced, expanded, worked out, or otherwise devised in Afghanistan or by even one single citizen of Afghanistan.
That country and its leadership in 2001, in fact, had nothing whatsoever to do with 9/11, as I detailed in depth here on August 15 of last year. The actual planning and management of the operation was done out of Pakistan and Germany, mostly by Khalid Sheik Mohammed.
The Taliban were bad guys, trashing the rights of women and running a tinpot dictatorship, but they represented no threat whatsoever to America or our allies.
Almost two decades later, though, then-President Donald Trump and Mike Pompeo gave the Taliban everything they wanted—power, legitimacy, shutting down 9 of the 10 U.S. air bases in that country to screw incoming President Joe Biden, and the release of 5,000 of Afghanistan’s worst Taliban war criminals—all over the strong objections of the democratically elected Afghan government in 2019.
Trump did this so he could falsely claim, heading into the 2020 election, that he’d “negotiated peace” in Afghanistan, when in fact he’d set up the debacle that happened around President Biden’s withdrawal from that country.
”The relationship I have with the Mullah is very good,” Trump proclaimed—after ordering the mullah, who then named himself president of Afghanistan, freed from prison over the furious objection of Afghan’s government, which Trump had cut out of the negotiations.
Following that betrayal of both Afghanistan and America, Trump and the GOP scrubbed the record of their embrace of the Taliban from their websites, as noted here and here.
And the conservative Boris Johnson administration in the U.K. came right out and said that Trump’s “rushed” deal with the Taliban—without involvement of the Afghan government or the international community—set up the difficulties Biden faced.
“The die was cast,” Defense Minister Ben Wallace told the BBC, “when the deal was done by Donald Trump, if you want my observation.”
So, Republican George W. Bush lied us into both the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, and then Donald Trump tried to lie us out of at least one of them.
But this was far from the first time a president has lied us into a war.
— Vietnam wasn’t the first time an American president and his buddies in the media lied us into a war when Defense Secretary Robert McNamara falsely claimed that an American warship had come under attack in the Gulf of Tonkin and Lyndon B. Johnson went along with the lie.
— Neither was President William McKinley lying us into the Spanish-American war in 1898 by falsely claiming that the USS Maine had been blown up in Havana harbor (it caught fire all by itself).
— The first time we were lied into a major war by a president was probably the Mexican-American war of 1846 when President James Polk lied that we’d been invaded by Mexico. Even Abraham Lincoln, then a congressman from Illinois, called him out on that lie.
— You could also argue that when President Andrew Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act in 1830 leading to the Trail of Tears slaughter and forced relocation of the Cherokee under President James Buchanan (among other atrocities) it was all based on a series of lies.
Bush’s lies that took us into Afghanistan and, a bit over a year later into Iraq, are particularly egregious, however, given his and Cheney’s reasons for those lies.
In 1999, when George W. Bush decided he was going to run for president in the 2000 election, his family hired Mickey Herskowitz to write the first draft of Bush’s autobiography, A Charge To Keep.
Although Bush had gone AWOL for about a year during the Vietnam War and was thus apparently no fan of combat, he’d concluded (from watching his father’s “little three-day war” with Iraq) that being a “wartime president” was the most consistently surefire way to get reelected (if you did it right) and have a two-term presidency.
“I’ll tell you, he was thinking about invading Iraq in 1999,” Herskowitz told reporter Russ Baker in 2004.
“One of the things [Bush] said to me,” Herskowitz said, “is: ‘One of the keys to being seen as a great leader is to be seen as a commander-in-chief. My father had all this political capital built up when he drove the Iraqis out of (Kuwait) and he wasted it.’”
“[Bush] said, ‘If I have a chance to invade Iraq, if I had that much capital, I’m not going to waste it. I’m going to get everything passed I want to get passed and I'm going to have a successful presidency.’”
The attack on 9/11 gave Bush his first chance to “be seen as a commander-in-chief” when our guy Osama bin Laden, who the Reagan/Bush administration had spent $3 billion building up in Afghanistan, engineered an attack on New York and D.C.
The crime was planned in Germany and Florida and on 9/11 bin Laden was, according to CBS News, not even in Afghanistan:
“CBS Evening News has been told that the night before the September 11 terrorists attack, Osama bin Laden was in Pakistan. He was getting medical treatment with the support of the very military that days later pledged its backing for the U.S. war on terror in Afghanistan.”
When the Obama administration finally caught and killed bin Laden, he was back in Pakistan, the home base for the Taliban.
But attacking our ally Pakistan in 2001 would have been impossible for Bush, and, besides, nearby Afghanistan was an easier target, being at that time the second-poorest country in the world with an average annual per-capita income of $700 a year. Bin Laden had run terrorist training camps there—unrelated to 9/11—but they made a fine excuse for Bush’s first chance to “be seen as a commander-in-chief” and get some leadership cred.
Cheney, meanwhile, was in a world of trouble because of a huge bet he’d made as CEO of Halliburton in 1998. Dresser Industries was big into asbestos and about to fall into bankruptcy because of asbestos lawsuits that the company was fighting through the court system.
Cheney bet Dresser would ultimately win the suits and had Halliburton buy the company on the cheap, but a year later, in 1999, Dresser got turned down by the courts and Haliburton’s stock went into freefall, crashing 68% in a matter of months.
Bush had asked Cheney—who’d worked in his father’s White House as secretary of defense—to help him find a suitable candidate for VP.
Cheney, as his company was collapsing, recommended himself for the job. In July of 2000, Cheney walked away with $30 million from the troubled company, and the year after that, as VP, Halliburton subsidiary KBR received one of the first no-bid no-ceiling (no accountability and no limit on how much they could receive) multibillion-dollar military contracts.
Bush and Cheney both had good reason to want to invade Afghanistan in October 2001. Bush was seen as an illegitimate president at the time because his father’s corrupt appointee on the Supreme Court, Clarence Thomas, had cast the deciding vote in the Bush v. Gore lawsuit that made him president; a war that gave him legitimacy and the aura of leadership.
Cheney’s company was in a crisis, and Afghanistan War no-bid contracts helped turn around Halliburton from the edge of bankruptcy into one of the world’s largest defense contractors today.
Even Trump had to get into the “let’s lie about Afghanistan” game, in his case to have bragging rights that he’d “ended the war in Afghanistan.”
In 2019, Trump went around the Afghan government (to their outrage: he even invited the Taliban to Camp David in a move that disgusted the world) to cut a so-called “peace deal” that sent thousands of newly empowered Taliban fighters back into the field, and then drew down our troops to the point where today’s chaos in that country was absolutely predictable.
Trump’s deal was the signal to the 300,000+ Afghan army recruits we’d put together and paid that America no longer had their back and if the Taliban showed up they should just run away. Which, of course, is what happened on Trump’s watch. As Susannah George of The Washington Postnoted:
“The Taliban capitalized on the uncertainty caused by the [Trump] February 2020 agreement reached in Doha, Qatar, between the militant group and the United States calling for a full American withdrawal from Afghanistan. Some Afghan forces realized they would soon no longer be able to count on American air power and other crucial battlefield support and grew receptive to the Taliban’s approaches.”
Jon Perr’s article at Daily Kos did a great summary, with the title: “Trump put 5,000 Taliban fighters back in battle and tied Biden’s hands in Afghanistan.”
Trump schemed and lied to help his own reelection efforts, and the people who worked with our military and the U.S.-backed Afghan government paid a terrible price for it.
As President Biden told America:
“When I came to office, I inherited a deal cut by my predecessor—which he invited the Taliban to discuss at Camp David on the eve of 9/11 of 2019—that left the Taliban in the strongest position militarily since 2001 and imposed a May 1, 2021 deadline on U.S. forces. Shortly before he left office, he also drew U.S. forces down to a bare minimum of 2,500.
“Therefore, when I became president, I faced a choice—follow through on the deal, with a brief extension to get our forces and our allies’ forces out safely, or ramp up our presence and send more American troops to fight once again in another country’s civil conflict. I was the fourth president to preside over an American troop presence in Afghanistan—two Republicans, two Democrats. I would not, and will not, pass this war onto a fifth.”
America has been lied into too many wars. It’s cost us too much in money, credibility, and blood. We must remember the lies, and tell our children about them so that memory isn’t lost.
When President Gerald Ford withdrew U.S. forces from Vietnam (I remember it well), there was barely a mention of McNamara’s and LBJ’s lies that got us into that war.
Similarly, today’s reporting on the chaos in Afghanistan and the war to seize the Iraqi oil fields almost never mentions Bush’s and Cheney’s lies and ulterior motives in getting us into those wars in the first place.
George Santayana famously noted, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
We can’t afford to let these lies go down the memory hole, like we have the other wars we were lied into that I mentioned earlier. Sadly, it’s clear now that neither Bush nor Cheney will be held accountable for their lies or for the American, Afghan, and Iraqi blood and treasure they cost.
But both should be subject to a clear and public airing of the crimes they committed in office and required—at the very least—to apologize to the thousands of American families destroyed by the loss of their soldier children, parents, and spouses, as well as to the people of both Afghanistan and Iraq.
If the media refuses to mention the Bush/Cheney lies on this anniversary of 9/11, it’s all the more important that the rest of us use this opportunity to do so. Pass it on.
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'Victory for the Afghan People' as US Judge Blocks 9/11 Families From Seizing Frozen Assets
"This money belongs to the Afghan people, and no one else," said Afghans for a Better Tomorrow, a coalition of Afghan-American community groups.
Feb 22, 2023
A coalition of Afghan-American community organizations on Wednesday welcomed a U.S. federal judge's ruling rejecting a bid by relatives of 9/11 victims to seize billions of dollars in assets belonging to the people of Afghanistan.
In a 30-page opinion issued Tuesday, Judge George B. Daniels of the Southern District of New York denied an effort by family members of people killed during the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States to gain access to $3.5 billion in frozen funds from Da Afghanistan Bank (DAB), the country's central bank.
"The judgment creditors are entitled to collect on their default judgments and be made whole for the worst terrorist attack in our nation's history, but they cannot do so with the funds of the central bank of Afghanistan," Daniels wrote. "The Taliban—not the former Islamic Republic of Afghanistan or the Afghan people—must pay for the Taliban's liability in the 9/11 attacks."
"We support the 9/11 families' quest for just compensation, but believe justice will not be achieved by 'raiding the coffers'... of a people already suffering."
The frozen assets are currently being held by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York in the wake of the Taliban's reconquest of the nation that, under the militant group's previous rule, hosted al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and other figures involved in planning and executing the terrorist attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people. The 9/11 attacks resulted in a U.S.-led invasion and occupation of Afghanistan that lasted nearly two decades, the longest war in American history.
"We are pleased to see that Judge Daniels shares the same assessment we laid out in our amicus brief to the court: That this money belongs to the Afghan people, and no one else," the coalition—Afghans for a Better Tomorrow (AFBT)—said in a statement.
\u201c\u2705 VICTORY FOR THE AFGHAN PEOPLE\n\nOur coalition of Afghan-American community organizations welcomes a judgment by a federal judge that rejects a bid to seize assets by the families of the victims of the September 11th attacks. \n\nOur full statement: https://t.co/mZct0WbZSU\u201d— Afghans For A Better Tomorrow (@Afghans For A Better Tomorrow) 1677095507
In February 2022, the Biden administration said it would split $7 billion in frozen DAB funds between the people of Afghanistan and victims of the 9/11 attacks who sued the Taliban—a move that one critic warned would amount to a "death sentence for untold numbers of civilians" in a war-ravaged country reeling from multiple humanitarian crises including widespread starvation.
Last August, U.S. Magistrate Judge Sarah Netburn said that 9/11 families should not be allowed to use billions of frozen DAB funds to pay off legal judgments against the Taliban.
"Just like the families of the September 11th attack victims, the Afghan people are no stranger to the Taliban's brutality and rule," AFBT co-director Arash Azizzada said. "We support the 9/11 families' quest for just compensation, but believe justice will not be achieved by 'raiding the coffers,' as Judge Daniels put [it], of a people already suffering."
\u201cThis wouldn\u2019t have been possible without the selfless efforts of many 9/11 victims\u2019 families \u2014 from @PeacefulTomorro and beyond \u2014 that refused to let their own tragedy be used to justify another tragedy for the Afghan people \nhttps://t.co/ehphzAqIPI\u201d— Michael Galant (@Michael Galant) 1677029836
Homaira Hosseini, a board member of coalition member Afghan-American Community Organization (AACO), asserted that "an appeal of this decision, which the 9/11 families have stated they will pursue, will only cause further harm to both Afghans and the families involved."
"We continue to encourage these families to seek legal retribution elsewhere," Hosseini added, "and to not further harm Afghans in the process."
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Millions of Afghans Are Starving as US Stalls on Returning Central Bank Funds
In September, the U.S. created a foundation that was supposed to unfreeze Afghanistan's foreign assets. Yet, interviews with trustees reveal that, in three months, no funds have been disbursed--or concrete plans made--to help the Afghan people.
Dec 20, 2022
The Taliban seized power in Afghanistan in August 2021 and, in response, Europe, the United Arab Emirates and the United States froze the Afghan central bank's roughly $9 billion in foreign assets--$7 billion of which was under control of the United States.
The freezing of the assets plunged Afghanistan into a liquidity crisis, in which people are unable to access their cash and perform essential transactions.
Without access to these funds--alongside a lattice of sanctions, a decline in humanitarian aid and harsh political turmoil under Taliban rule--Afghanistan has been led into an economic collapse with a dramatic uptick in poverty; 6 million Afghans are facing the immediate risk of starvation. According to calculations from the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), a left-leaning think tank, U.S. sanctions on Afghanistan (including the freezing of these central bank assets) could kill more people than 20 years of U.S. war and occupation.
In September, the Biden administration placed half of the U.S.-controlled assets into a private foundation, trusteed by just four people, "to be used for the benefit of the people of Afghanistan while keeping them out of the hands of the Taliban and other malign actors," according to a joint statement from the departments of Treasury and State.
But interviews with two of those four trustees reveal that no funds have yet been disbursed to help the Afghan people and there are no policies in place to do so immediately. One trustee underscored that it is unlikely the foundation will be a vehicle to quickly return the assets to Afghanistan's central bank while the Taliban is maintaining oppressive rule.
This lack of progress raises concerns that the Biden administration is on course to worsen the rapidly spiraling humanitarian crisis. "Who pays the price," asks Basir Bita, an Afghan activist who works with the Afghan refugee community in Canada and who has family in Afghanistan, "for the U.S. freezing the funds? The public. The people who live in Afghanistan."
Creation of a foundation
The United States froze the Afghan central bank's assets amid public outcry over the U.S. military's withdrawal from Afghanistan. The Biden administration depicted the move as a refusal to legitimize Taliban rule.
Yet, according to Andres Arauz, a senior research fellow at the CEPR, "The reality is that central banks don't just hold government money--they also and mostly hold commercial banks' money. They are not only banks of governments; they are also banks of banks. It was important for the working of Afghanistan's financial system, and therefore its economy, that their banks have access to money that was seized by the United States."
The freezing of the assets plunged Afghanistan into a liquidity crisis, in which people are unable to access their cash and perform essential transactions. Alongside the liquidity crisis is hyper-inflation, which has worsened the acute and widespread problem of hunger. Between June 2021 and July 2022, the price of wheat flour in Afghanistan skyrocketed 68% and cooking oil jumped 55%, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross. Seventy percent of homes are "unable to meet basic food and non-food needs," the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies warned in June. Reports have emerged of Afghans selling their daughters, and their kidneys, in an effort to survive hunger and rising debt.
Citing the deepening catastrophe, some activists and lawmakers have been calling for the Biden administration to take a less collectively punitive approach and return the assets to Afghanistan's central bank. In January, the New York Times editorial board published an op-ed warning against a policy of letting the Afghan central bank fall apart, titled, "Let Innocent Afghans Have Their Money."
In the midst of all of this, in February, the Biden administration issued an executive order to set aside $3.5 billion of the U.S.-held central bank assets for victims of the attacks of September 11, 2001 (though lawyers and lobbyists stand to profit handsomely). This move was widely criticized by United Nations experts and some 9/11 families for its disastrous humanitarian consequences for Afghans.
On September 14, the U.S. departments of Treasury and State announced the other half of the U.S.-controlled reserves of the Afghan central bank--another $3.5 billion--would be placed under the control of a Swiss foundation called the Afghan Fund. The Afghan Fund would "maintain its account" with the Bank for International Settlements, which is a global financial institution, based in Switzerland, that provides banking services for central banks.
Afghan men carrying a sack of flour in January as the UN World Food Program distributes monthly food rations in an area south of Kabul. Between June 2021 and July 2022, the price of wheat flour in Afghanistan skyrocketed 68%. (Photo by Scott Peterson/Getty Images)
According to a statement from the Bank for International Settlements, its role "is limited to providing banking services" and it plays no part in the decision-making of the Afghan Fund.
In the short term, the Afghan Fund's board of trustees "will have the ability to authorize targeted disbursements to promote monetary and macroeconomic stability and benefit the Afghan people," according to the joint statement from Treasury and State. The foundation could, for example, use the assets to pay for "critical imports like electricity," or to pay for "Afghanistan's arrears at international financial institutions to preserve their eligibility for financial support." The Afghan Fund's long-term goal is to return the funds to the Afghan central bank, but only if key assessments and "counter-terrorism" controls are implemented, the statement indicates.
Some activists and members of the U.S. Congress cautiously supported the creation of the Afghan Fund, hoping it marked a step toward the United States unfreezing the assets. "The fund has the potential to create a vital pathway to a functioning financial system, returning desperately needed assets to Afghanistan that could alleviate major price spikes of food and other essentials," Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, wrote in a September 15statement.
The press coverage surrounding the Afghan Fund intimated a major unlocking of the assets could be just around the corner. "Setting up the new fund will enable the funds to flow quickly," Kylie Atwood wrote for CNN.
But now, three months later, no money has been distributed and two of the Afghan Fund's trustees say there is no immediate plan to return assets to the Afghan central bank.
Four trustees
The Afghan Fund has four trustees who make its decisions. Of the two born in Afghanistan, the first is Anwar-ul-Haq Ahady, former head of the Afghan central bank and Afghanistan's former minister of finance. The second is Shah Mehrabi, a professor at Montgomery College in Maryland, who also serves on the Afghan central bank's Supreme Council.
Mehrabi and Ahady each confirmed to Workday Magazine and In These Times that, in the three months since it was created, the Afghan Fund has not disbursed any funds--neither directly to the Afghan central bank, nor to meet any immediate needs for economic stabilization--and has no immediate plans to make significant disbursements to the central bank.
At the first meeting of the Afghan Fund trustees in Geneva on November 21, "potential disbursement issues were addressed but no policy and procedures or options were elaborated or finalized," Mehrabi explains. There is another meeting scheduled for January, he says, but "release of these funds to the central bank most likely will not occur in January." Ahady confirmed the Afghan Fund has not yet reached agreement on a policy to disburse funds.
According to Mehrabi and Ahady, among the trustees at the November 21 meeting was Andrew Baukol, the U.S. Treasury's acting undersecretary for international affairs, who replaced Scott Miller, U.S. ambassador to Switzerland, as a trustee. (The U.S. Embassy in Switzerland confirmed that Miller had been replaced, and "the U.S. representative is now based at Treasury.") The swap-in of Baukol, who has also worked in the CIA and the U.S. office of the International Monetary Fund, suggests a larger role for the Treasury Department.
The fourth trustee is Alexandra Baumann, a Swiss foreign ministry official.
For any decision to go through, it must have the unanimous backing of the foundation's four trustees, Ahady explains. Given the Treasury Department's representation, "If the U.S. government disagrees, no decision will be made," he says.
Mehrabi's position on the board was a win for advocates of unfreezing the Afghan central bank funds, as he is an outspoken proponent of unlocking the assets and restoring them to the central bank. Mehrabi explains over WhatsApp that he would like to see a "limited, monitored release" of funds to the Afghan central bank, ranging from $80 million to $100 million per month, "depending on the demand and stabilization of currency and stable prices." (He has previously called for $150 million a month.)
Mehrabi's proposal is relatively moderate compared with others who have issued less qualified calls to fully unfreeze the Afghan central bank assets and revive the institution. But for those who are anxious to welcome any amount of disbursement to Afghanistan's central bank, Mehrabi stands out for supporting the direct flow of funds.
When asked whether other trustees agree the funds should be returned to the Afghan central bank, Mehrabi replies, "The issue of disbursement has not been fully discussed yet and finalized."
A Treasury Department readout from the November 21 meeting says the trustees of the Afghan Fund agreed on operational matters, like "hiring an external auditor" and "developing compliance controls and foundational corporate governance documents." But the readout contains no mention of what will happen with the actual assets.
When asked about the prospect of unlocking the assets for the Afghan central bank, Mehrabi explains: "The U.S. government's position has been not to release funds to the central bank unless capacity building and AML/CFT issues [anti-money laundering and counter-financing control measures] are resolved. How long will this take? There is an immediate need to tackle higher prices that people are suffering from, and lack of funds has prevented businesses from paying for imports. If funds are not released soon, the suffering of Afghans will continue."
Ahady says over the phone that, due to the position of the United States, the Afghan Fund will be unlikely to return any significant portion of the assets to the Afghan central bank while the Taliban "is declining U.S. requests for more inclusive government and women's rights."
Some funds may be disbursed for key items that circumvent the central bank in the public interest, Ahady says, such as printing new bank notes or passports. But the primary purpose of the Afghan Fund "is really to keep this money so that, one day, when the situation becomes normal, this is the capital of the Afghan central bank. So at least the central bank will have capital to work with. So the main idea is not so much disbursement, unless it's strictly needed, but to manage the fund that's under sanction."
Ahady declined to comment on whether he supports this orientation to the frozen assets.
Such an approach would differ from the standards laid out in the joint statement from the departments of Treasury and State, which highlights three conditions for unfreezing the assets: that the central bank "demonstrates its independence from political influence and interference"; "demonstrates it has instituted adequate anti-money laundering and countering-the-financing-of-terrorism (AML/CFT) controls"; and "completes a third-party needs assessment and onboards a reputable third-party monitor."
According to Cavan Kharrazian, a progressive foreign policy advocate for Demand Progress, any delay will most greatly harm those who are already vulnerable and oppressed under Taliban rule. "For the foreseeable future, the Taliban will be in charge of the government of Afghanistan," Kharrazian says. "While they have a deplorable human rights record, especially towards women, there is also a severe economic and humanitarian crisis in the country that needs immediate attention. This crisis affects the most vulnerable segments of society the worst."
Kharrazian adds: "The U.S. just spent 20 years and trillions of dollars attempting to eradicate and replace the Taliban and its oppressive rule. It didn't work. But the U.S. does have the ability to facilitate the unfreezing of funds that can benefit millions of people facing humanitarian disaster in Afghanistan."
Afghan activist Bita implores that "the funds need to be released right now, because people are struggling. So many people lost their lives, so many people sold their kids on the streets, so many forced their daughters to marry a man because of the economic situation. So it has to be right now."
Arauz, from the CEPR, says it would be a profound mistake on the part of the United States to withhold assets from the Afghan central bank in order to punish the Taliban. "The central bank funds are not government funds," he emphasizes. "They are commingled with commercial banks' funds, which ultimately belong to depositors, which are human beings and businesses. It would not be returning the funds to the Taliban--it would be returning funds to the commercial system and depositors of the Afghan economy."
The clock is ticking and activists warn that each day without the unfreezing of the funds brings more hardship for Afghans. "When the fund was created, every major humanitarian institution, the United Nations, etc., were already pretty clear that the whole country faced a giant humanitarian crisis that needed to be addressed as soon as possible," Kharrazian says. "There was already a sense of urgency.
"They've waited three months to deliberate over sending small portions over what should have been fully unfrozen funds. If it was urgent in September, it's especially urgent now, with winter arriving."
Many children in Afghanistan cannot stand on their own feet because of hunger and malnutrition. Here, children are seen with their mothers in Kabul in January. (Photo by Sayed Khodaiberdi Sadat/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
Ahady's position is that unlocking the Afghan central bank assets would not be a magic wand. He says that "the objective of sanctions is to make things difficult, and have these sanctions contributed to the slowdown of economic activities in Afghanistan? Yes." But, he contends, a number of factors are to blame, including dependency on foreign assistance, the imposition of sanctions, and poor economic management. "I think that, even if the U.S. government were to release this fund, this is not going to solve Afghanistan's economic problems," he says. "It might help a little bit. Just a little bit."
Afghan Fund trustee Baumann did not respond to a request for an interview, but she has emphasized caution in previous statements to the press. "The [Afghan central bank], in its current form, is not a fit place for this money," she said in an October article from SWI swiss in fo .ch, a media service of the Swiss Broadcasting Corporation. "We do not have any guarantee that if the money goes back right now that it will be effectively used for the benefit of the Afghan people."
The U.S. Treasury Department also did not return a request for comment.
With no clear timetable for disbursing funds, Erik Sperling, executive director of advocacy organization Just Foreign Policy, expresses frustration. "Given U.S. Treasury's continued veto and dominance over the Swiss Fund," he says, "U.S. officials like Janet Yellen, Adewale O. Adeyemo and, ultimately, President Biden are responsible for destroying [the Afghan] economy and knowingly plunging tens of millions of Afghans into crisis."
According to Bita, "The way the U.S. government has taken hostage of the funds--that is one way of dehumanizing the people of Afghanistan."
"With this money," Bita adds, "you could save the lives of so many people."
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