Chen Zi

  US President Biden recently signed an executive order, planning to use half of the about $7 billion in assets frozen by the Central Bank of Afghanistan to compensate the victims of the "9.11" incident, and the other half to set up a trust fund to help the Afghan people.

This move quickly ignited international public opinion, and "US stealing money from Afghanistan" on Twitter once became a hot topic.

  Ajmal Ahmadi, the former governor of the Central Bank of Afghanistan, revealed on social media earlier that the Central Bank of Afghanistan holds about US$9 billion in foreign exchange reserves, of which about US$7 billion is deposited in US banks.

On the eve of the complete withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan, the US government announced that it would freeze the foreign exchange reserves of the Central Bank of Afghanistan.

The frozen foreign exchange reserves, in addition to the aid funds of the international community, also include the deposits of ordinary Afghan people.

The Central Bank of Afghanistan said the funds belonged to the Afghan people and not to any government, party or organization.

  The White House said that the families of many victims of the "9.11" incident filed a lawsuit against the Afghan Taliban regime for compensation from the Afghan central bank's assets in the United States, and the Biden administration supported their demands.

But this statement is not self-consistent.

The New York Times said that what complicates and contradicts the matter is that the United States has always not recognized the Taliban as the legitimate government of Afghanistan. If the frozen funds of the Central Bank of Afghanistan do not belong to the Taliban, how can they be used to pay for the "Taliban's '9.11'" compensation"?

  In 2001, the US-led coalition launched the Afghanistan War, pushing the Afghan people into the abyss of suffering.

During the war in Afghanistan, more than 30,000 innocent civilians were killed by the US military or killed in the war, and about 11 million people became refugees.

In 2021, the United States hastily withdrawn troops from Afghanistan.

Twenty years of gunpowder and war have destroyed the peaceful life that the Afghan people could have enjoyed.

What the United States has brought to Afghanistan is not peace and development, but endless wars, devastation, and misery for the people.

Statistics from the United Nations World Food Program show that 22.8 million Afghans face serious food security problems, 3.2 million Afghan children under the age of 5 are severely malnourished, and Afghanistan is facing "an avalanche of hunger and poverty".

  Today, the initiator of these crises, the United States, has not only failed to shoulder its due responsibility to help the Afghan people ease the crisis, but has openly encroached on Afghan national assets, making the local people even worse.

Arbitrary freezing of Afghan property or even appropriation of it is blatant robbery.

  To the Afghan people, this asset is "life-saving money", but to the U.S. government, it is just a tool to serve its own political purposes.

The Quincy Institute for National Affairs, an American think tank, said that Biden's decision to freeze and reallocate Afghanistan's foreign exchange reserves was a political move aimed at showing his Republican opponents his tough stance on the Taliban.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said that the U.S. arbitrarily distributed or even appropriated it through domestic laws, once again exposing the true face of the power and hegemony that the U.S. side concealed under the mask of the so-called "rules-based international order".

  In fact, not all relatives of the "9.11" victims want the compensation, and some of them want the Biden administration to reverse the decision.

"We can't get our loved ones back," Barry Amundson, who lost a loved one on 9/11, told the media, "but we can advocate for the Biden administration to return the money to its rightful owners— — People of Afghanistan, come and save their lives."

  The blood debt that the U.S. government owes the Afghan people is probably not clear at all.