Joe Biden’s $7 Billion Betrayal of Afghanistan
The president’s move to seize the country’s foreign reserves rather than work to resolve the humanitarian crisis has drawn harsh criticism. Rightly so.
Desperate for food.
Photographer: Wakil Kohsar/AFP/Getty Images
Out of all the actions the Biden Administration could have taken on Afghanistan, commandeering the nation’s foreign currency reserves is, to put it mildly, unhelpful.
In an executive order signed Friday, President Joe Biden began the process of releasing the $7 billion in Afghan Central Bank funds held in the Federal Reserve. It froze those assets last August when the Taliban seized control of Afghanistan as American and NATO forces withdrew. His plan proposes directing $3.5 billion into a trust fund for humanitarian assistance to Afghanistan while putting the other $3.5 billion aside for families of victims of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the U.S.