Biden’s move to Seize Afghan Assets; when American Morals go Wild!
On Friday, US President Joe Biden signed an executive order, allocating $7 billion of Afghanistan’s $ 9.5 billion frozen funds held in the US, to the victims of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The White House said that $ 3.5 billion will be directly available for possible seizure by victims of the September 11 attacks while another 50 percent for their lawsuits.
After the decree was signed, the US diplomatic apparatus sought to justify it. US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and US Special Representative on Afghanistan Thomas West describe Biden’s action in the interest of the Afghan people. There is a big ambiguity here: how is it that our assets – which we seriously need at this crucial moment – are given to others but it would benefit the Afghan people?
In addition, international organizations such as Human Rights Watch have accused Biden of seeking to seize Afghanistan’s bank assets. In other words, the President of the world’s largest economy covets the piddling amount of money of a nation that is extremely hungry, unemployed, poor, and helpless. A nation that needs every cent and is looking forward to overcoming the current crisis.
Biden appears to have taken this step to ensure that the Taliban will not be able to have access to the reserves as domestic and international pressure on the White House to release the frozen funds had increased. Although Washington has proven to be less resilient to global pressures, the possibility of a retreat to the demands of Congress and Senators was not far off.
But if we look deep into the issue, Biden’s action does not affect the Taliban, nor does it force them to back down from their policies as the US sanctions elsewhere, forcing countries to back down, has had an opposite effect.
Thus, playing with the assets of a poor, war-torn, and hungry country that is on the brink of collapse, indicates that the White-House’s seizure of a nation’s assets is not a punishment for the Taliban rather a massacre of a nation. First, these reserves belong to the people of Afghanistan and have nothing to do with the Taliban. Second, it shows the depth of Biden’s resentment and hatred from the Afghan people – overtly expressed!
Biden believes that Afghanistan has never been united and has failed in the process of becoming a nation. He has repeatedly stated this and even once stipulated that anyone who thinks he can unite the people of Afghanistan, raise his hand. He blames the US defeat in Afghanistan not on the 20-year Taliban insurgency but the lack of unity and nationhood of the Afghan people. He thinks that because the Afghan people were not united, the United States failed to occupy Afghanistan and eventually abandoned the country with a disgraceful defeat, and at a cost of billions of dollars. Biden has repeatedly raised the issue of US spending in Afghanistan, pointing out such money has been wasted.
Being optimistic, Biden’s decision is, in fact, revenge against the Afghan people, and as a long-lasting grudge, Biden vents his anger from the Afghan debacle, on the piddling funds this nation has in the US banks. Biden, in such status, is like a faultfinder child who has not achieved his goal and criticizes everything.
