C’is an unusual maneuver that Joe Biden has just operated. Friday, February 11, the American president signed a decree which allows him to take control of the very numerous assets of the central bank of Afghanistan, deposited in the United States. The current tenant of the White House has thus got his hands on about 7 billion dollars. A pretty jackpot that he intends to reserve, half, for the families of the victims of the attacks of September 11, 2001. To succeed in this operation, the Democratic president had recourse to a law of 1977, which grants him “extraordinary economic powers”.
The American president intends to transfer these assets to a blocked account of the Federal Reserve of New York, a public institution, the White House said. The assets of central banks are most often financial securities, currencies or gold. Joe Biden wants half of the sum to be set aside for compensation claims filed in particular by families of victims of the September 11, 2001 attacks.
A sum partly reserved for humanitarian aid for the Afghan people
It provides for the other half to be devoted to humanitarian aid for Afghanistan, but which would be paid in such a way that the money does not fall into the hands of the Taliban, the White House explained. “It is very important to be able to both take $3.5 billion and ensure that it is used for the benefit of the Afghan people” and also to guarantee that families of victims of terrorism “can have their voices heard before the American federal justice, explained a senior official of the White House during a press conference.
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Clearly, it is a question of setting aside approximately 3.5 billion dollars pending the outcome of the legal proceedings brought by these families, who are demanding the seizure of Afghan assets. The senior US official, who wished to remain anonymous, acknowledged that this set of operations orchestrated by the White House was “legally complicated”, and argued that Friday’s announcement was only the beginning of a process that is expected to take months.
Afghan reserves in the United States of nearly $10 billion
The course chosen by the American president, which sees the United States taking possession of the assets of another State, will certainly cause many controversies, at a time when Afghanistan is experiencing a serious humanitarian crisis. The Taliban have demanded to take control of the reserves of the Afghan central bank, and Russia in particular has also urged the United States to release these assets.
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In total, the gross reserves of the Afghan central bank stood at the end of April 2021 at 9.4 billion dollars, according to the International Monetary Fund. This sum, deposited before the Taliban regained power last August, is held mainly abroad, and for the most part in the United States.
Assets from what source?
Certainly aware of the controversies that the decision is sure to cause, White House officials assured that these reserves of the Afghan central bank “come from the continuous and significant assistance [à l’Afghanistan, NDLR] from the United States and other international donors for two decades. The American executive also recalled that the United States was already the main supplier of aid to Afghanistan, and assured that this bilateral aid remained separate from the procedure for freezing the assets of the Afghan central bank.
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“This decree will allow a substantial part of Afghanistan’s reserves to be kept for the benefit of the Afghan people, but we understand that Afghanistan’s economic problems, exacerbated by the Taliban’s takeover, cannot be solved by simple way,” the White House said in a statement.