9/11 victims to be compensated from confiscated Afghan funds
Afghanistan's reinstated Taliban regime will not recover much, or at least a very substantial part, of its central bank funds deposited in the United States. Of the $9.4 billion in assets that Afghanistan's central bank held abroad before the Taliban conquered Kabul last August, $7 billion has been confiscated by US President Joe Biden.
The current occupant of the White House used a 1977 law that gives him extraordinary emergency economic powers. As a result, the money was transferred to a special account blocked by the New York Federal Reserve.
The impact of the news of the seizure was softened by the announcement that the funds would be used for half, or 3.5 billion, to cover the compensation that the courts are expected to award to the families of the victims of the attacks of 11 September 2001. Many of them had already filed the corresponding claims several years ago, although it will probably take a few more months or years for the lawsuits to be finalised. By contrast, the other $3.5 billion can be distributed much more quickly, as humanitarian aid, to those organisations capable of channelling it. These organisations will have to prove that the aid does not fall into the hands of the Taliban.
President Biden's manoeuvre is intended to achieve several objectives. First, to at least partially make up for the poor image that the film of the hasty and chaotic evacuation of Kabul, the fall of which facilitated the return to power of a Taliban regime that is showing numerous signs of having returned to the most brutal practices of its ignominious rule, had for himself and for the United States. At the same time, the gesture blames them for having harboured the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, whose reprisals radically changed the geopolitics of the world. And, of course, it compensates the families and relatives of the victims, never forgotten as the memorials and ongoing commemorations prove, but always inadequately compensated for the horror of suffering the immense loss of their own future and that of those who died or were wounded for life.
It also sends a message to the Afghan people themselves, who are ultimately the main victims of a regime with which many do not sympathise, especially women, whose freedom and autonomy have been curtailed once again to return to the darkest of times. Of course, humanitarian aid will clearly be insufficient, and it will certainly be very difficult for it to reach its intended recipients without first being intercepted by the regime's militiamen, but that is another debate.
Finally, and to cover the flank of those most critical of this "appropriation" of other people's funds, Biden has taken it upon himself to argue that practically all of the confiscated funds originally came from donations to the Afghan government, also in the form of humanitarian aid, made over the last two decades, between the fall of the Taliban regime and its return to power.
The overall balance sheet of those attacks and the subsequent invasion, occupation and war in the country, in the process sustaining proven corrupt leaders, is essentially disastrous, given what has resulted in so much hardship and effort. The confiscation and attribution of these 7 billion dollars does not erase history, but it does at least alleviate some of the tragedy of the victims for whom it was all unleashed.