The Afghan people are victims of terrorism themselves, and the US has no moral authority to spend the impoverished nation’s frozen funds to pay 9/11 victims, former Afghan President Hamid Karzai has said.
“This money does not belong to any government. Much of this money was collected during my term in office. But that’s not the money of my government. Not the government that came after me of Dr. Ashraf Ghani, nor the government today,” Karzai said, speaking in a press briefing Sunday.
“This money belongs to the people of Afghanistan. This is the property of the Afghan people and the Afghan people are the rightful owners of this property. I request President Joe Biden to reconsider his decision and to return the totality of Afghan assets, reserves back to the people of Afghanistan,” the former president added.
Karzai, who was installed as Afghanistan’s president by the US following its invasion in 2001 and won reelection twice before leaving office in September 2014, said Afghans were not responsible for 9/11. “No one punishes the victim,” he said.
“The people of Afghanistan share the pain of the American people, share the pain of the families and loved ones of those who died, who lost their lives in the tragedy of September 11. We commiserate with them [but] Afghan people are as much victims as those families who lost their lives…Withholding money or seizing money from the people of Afghanistan in their name is unjust and unfair and an atrocity against Afghan people,” Karzai stressed.
The former president also alleged that al-Qaeda* leader and suspected 9/11 mastermind Osama bin Laden was not brought to Afghanistan by Afghans, but by foreigners from Pakistan, and that he was then returned to Pakistan, where he was killed. Afghans should not be made to pay for the terrorist leader’s actions, Karzai said.
Unlike his successor, who is rumoured to have fled Afghanistan with suitcases full of cash, Karzai has remained in Afghanistan with his family.
31 December 2021, 03:27 GMT
The Biden administration’s executive order on Afghan money in US banks stipulates that $3.5 billion of the funds be set aside for a US court to determine whether they can be used to pay claims by families of 9/11 victims. The other $3.5 billion ‘humanitarian trust’, ostensibly meant to provide humanitarian aid to Afghanistan while bypassing the Taliban “and other malicious actors,” would also require US courts’ approval before being delivered to the impoverished and war-torn country.
Washington holds the Taliban partially responsible for al-Qaeda’s campaign of terrorism against Americans for providing refuge to bin Laden in the late 1990s. US officials allege that bin Laden used Afghanistan as a base of operations while coordinating attacks on US diplomatic facilities in Africa, the bombing of a US warship in 2000, and the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001, in which nearly 3,000 Americans were killed by 19 hijackers suspected of commandeering commercial passenger jets and flying them into buildings in New York and Washington, DC. The Taliban maintains to this day that the US has never provided evidence of bin Laden’s role in 9/11.
On Saturday, dozens of protesters gathered near the Grand Id Gah Mosque in Kabul, accusing the US of “cruelty” over its seizure of the frozen Afghan Central Bank funds, and demanding financial compensation for Afghans killed during the 19+ year US and NATO-led war and occupation of their country.
Afghanistan is one of the poorest countries in the world, with a recent UN report warning that 98 percent of its people do not have enough food to eat, up from 81 percent before the fall of Kabul to the Taliban last August.
* The Taliban is an organization under UN Sanctions for terrorist activities.
** A terrorist group outlawed in Russia and many other countries.