Spurning Demand by the Taliban, Biden Moves to Split $7 Billion in Frozen Afghan Funds
The New York Times
The president intends to use the Afghan central bank’s assets to fund humanitarian relief and other needs in Afghanistan, and compensate victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
WASHINGTON — President Biden will start to clear a legal path for certain relatives of victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to pursue $3.5 billion from assets that Afghanistan’s central bank had deposited in New York before the Taliban takeover, according to officials familiar with internal deliberations.
At the same time, Mr. Biden will issue an executive order invoking emergency powers to consolidate and freeze all $7 billion of the total assets the Afghan central bank kept in New York and ask a judge for permission to move the other $3.5 billion to a trust fund to pay for immediate humanitarian relief efforts and other needs in Afghanistan, the officials said.
The highly unusual set of moves, expected to be announced on Friday, is meant to address a tangled knot of legal, political, foreign policy and humanitarian problems stemming from the attacks and the end of the 20-year war in Afghanistan.
