Afghan officials slam Biden's decision to compensate 9/11 victims with Afghan assets

Deputy spokesperson for the Taliban government Inamullah Samangani on Sunday criticized Washington's "unfair" decision to compensate the victims of 9/11 terrorist attacks with Afghanistan's assets.

"The recent decision of U.S. President Joe Biden on the handling of the foreign exchange reserve of Afghanistan is a hasty, unfair revenge, which demonstrates the United States' extremely darkened morality," Samangani told Xinhua.

Meanwhile, Afghanistan's former president Hamid Karzai urged the U.S. administration to return his country's assets.

Following the pullout of its troops from Afghanistan in August 2021, the United States has frozen nearly 10 billion U.S. dollars worth of assets of Afghanistan's central bank, which worsened the economic crisis and poverty in the war-torn Asian country.

In a decree issued on Friday, Biden reportedly ordered the allocation of 3.5 billion dollars from the assets as damage to the victims of the 9/11 terrorist attacks and diverted 3.5 billion more dollars to the Afghans as humanitarian aid, without the consent of the Taliban-run administration.

"Holding Afghanistan's money on any name is unfair and unjust. That money belongs to the people of Afghanistan ... I am calling on President Joe Biden to return the money to the people of Afghanistan," Karzai told a press conference here.

Afghan central bank the Da Afghanistan Bank (DAB) said in a statement that blocking Foreign Exchange (FX) Reserves and allocating them under the name of compensation or humanitarian assistance to others was "injustice" to the people of Afghanistan, calling for the reversal of the U.S. government's decision on splitting the frozen Afghan assets into the United States.

"The Americans after suffering a military defeat now are stamping their moral defeat by taking such an unfair decision. The Afghan assets cannot be paid as compensation or humanitarian assistance by the Americans to Afghans as they are Afghanistan's assets," Samangani said.

With regard to Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, Samangani said, "everyone knows that no Afghan was involved, no attacker was Afghan, the planes used in the attacks didn't belong to Afghanistan, and the territory from where the attacks were launched didn't belong to Afghanistan."

Samangani accused the United States of committing crimes against Afghans during its 20-year military presence in Afghanistan, saying the U.S. troops have killed more than 100,000 Afghans.

Millions of Afghans have been arrested, injured and displaced, and "who should pay compensation to them?" Samangani said. "The richest country in the world is stealing from the pocket of the world's poorest country."