The US will seize half of Afghanistan foreign reserves

? Not your keys, not your money.

In most cases this maxim refers to a commercial bank or a payment processor that can block any individual’s account, but the US President Biden took it to a whole new level, disposing of the account of an entire country.

During the American occupation, Afghanistan’s foreign reserves have been kept in the Federal Reserve Bank of New-York, and when the Taliban took over and the US troops retreated, these reserves were frozen.

In an executive order signed last Friday President Biden released the $7Bn of frozen Afghan reserves, which will be split between humanitarian aid to Afghanistan and… legal settlement with the American victims of terrorist attacks. What? ?

It appears that a group of relatives of victims of the 9/11 attacks won a default judgement against the Taliban and al-Qaida in 2011, and they have recently served the Fed with a writ of execution demanding that the Afghan’s $7Bn should be disbursed to them. Biden decided to let them claim half of that amount.

? By now you should have probably heard of the catastrophic humanitarian situation in Afghanistan. Its economy is crashing, and its people are paying a heavy price:

➡️out of 40 million Afghans 23 million are considered to suffer from extreme levels of #hunger (cf. UN),

➡️over 1 million children face an immediate risk of death by starvation (UNICEF),

➡️thousands of children are sent to the streets to find labour or simply beg for food (Afghan regional Departments of Labour and Social Affairs)…

IMF and World Bank have both stopped their aid since last August, and many humanitarian NGOs say it’s difficult to get to the people through sanctions-fearing banks and the Talibans.

We do understand how unjust it must feel to lose someone you love to a terrorist attack. But how can stealing $3.5Bn from the starving people, most of whom have nothing in common with the terrorists except for their country of residence, help correct this injustice – this is beyond our understanding.

? The US taking $3.5Bn from people who are obliged to sell their kidneys or their 10-year-old daughters to get food is another, very tragic, example of how the notion of “justice” can be distorted to the profit of those who have more power.

There is no universal judge that will make sure your money is rightfully managed. The only solution is to own your own money – and so far only crypto can help with that.