Pakistan has questioned the US decision of setting aside half of the Afghan assets held in America for the victims of the 9/11 attacks, saying utilisation of Afghan funds should be the “sovereign decision of Afghanistan.”
A spokesperson of Foreign Office Saturday said Pakistan has seen the US decision to unfreeze the Afghan assets held by the US banks to release $3.5 billion for humanitarian assistance in Afghanistan and $3.5 billion for compensation to families of 9/11 victims.
Responding to media questions, he said over the past several months, Pakistan has been consistently emphasising the need for international community to quickly act to address the unfolding humanitarian catastrophe in Afghanistan and to help revive the Afghan economy, as the two were inextricably linked.”Finding ways to unfreeze the Afghan foreign reserves urgently would help address the humanitarian and economic needs of the Afghan people.”
He said Pakistan’s principled position on the frozen Afghan foreign bank reserves remained that these were owned by the Afghan nation and these should be released. The utilization of Afghan funds should be the sovereign decision of Afghanistan.
The Afghan people were facing grave economic and humanitarian challenges and the international community must continue to play its important and constructive role in alleviating their sufferings. Time was of the essence, he added.
The Afghan Taliban were also quick to denounce the US decision.Mohammad Naeem, the spokesman for the Taliban’s political office in Doha, said in a tweet, “Stealing the Afghan people’s money that was frozen by the United States is the lowest a country could stoop to morally and humanly. Defeat and victory are part of human history but the greatest and scandalous defeat for a country or its people is when they suffer militarily and morally as well.” SuhailShaheen, the Taliban’s designated representative to the UN, called for the entire amount to be unfrozen and kept under the control of the Afghan central bank.
“The reserve is the property of Da Afghanistan Bank and by extension, the property of the people of Afghanistan,” Shaheen told Reuters.
The spokesman of the Taliban’s Doha office blasted the US move in a tweet: “Stealing and takeover of frozen money which belongs to the Afghan people by US shows the lowest level of human and moral decline of a country.”
Separately, Pakistan’s Permanent Ambassador to the UN Munir Akram noted, “This money is critically needed to revive and sustain the Afghan economy, inject much-needed liquidity, and to save millions of lives in the middle of a harsh winter.”
“There is something wrong with a financial system where one State can unilaterally block the National assets of another to pay off questionable claims by its own citizens,” Akram added.
The $7 billion in funds from Da Afghanistan Bank, the country’s central bank, that were on deposit at the Federal Reserve Bank in New York, have been frozen since then-President Ashraf Ghani’s government collapsed after the Taliban takeover at the end of August 2021.The country has experienced economic collapse and food insecurity since then.
