What Do We Have To Know About The Frozen Afghan Funds?


What right does one country have to freeze the assets of another one?

What about when the country sanctioned is undergoing a major crisis?

These are the questions we have to ask about what the U.S. has been doing to Afghanistan.

In my previous article, I’ve pointed to the grim predictions that various aid agencies as well as UN bodies have given us about Afghanistan. I also asked three questions about the frozen Afghan funds: who’s holding them, how could they be released, and what would that mean to the people of Afghanistan? There is an excellent video inside of this article that I highly recommend you watch.

Now, just last week, on February 11th, President Biden announced he would release half of the Afghan funds to aid agencies while another half will be attrbuted to the victims of 9/11.

At this point, we have to ask even more questions – and we have not to be afraid to make loud statemens, to make normative (value) judgements, and to even more strongly than before condemn what the U.S. is going with the Afghan money.

This is what I do in my podcast episode.

I describe how the situation on the ground in Afghanistan is being presented, I quickly summarise what has been happening with the Afghan funds, and why we have to question this recent move by President Biden.

Inevitably, touch upon the topic of sanctions that I promise to more thoroughly (as it is a huge topic) explore in my upcoming episodes.

I do say that there are many ways we can stand with the Afghan people. Here is a petition by my organisation, CODEPINK, that calls for President Biden to release all the funds to Afghanistan.


Also, here is a video I simply HAVE to share:

Latest from the Blog

#JusticeForShireen, A Year Later

Exactly a year ago, Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh was murdered by an Israeli sniper. What happened in a year in Palestine? And what lenses can help us understand what’s been happening in Palestine for decades, as seen through Shireen’s painful example?

What Are Political Prisoners And Why Should We Care About Them?

Why can it seem problematic at first sight to even define the concept of ‘political prisoner’? What can help us to do so? And, most importantly, why should we care? In short, we should care about our political prisoners if we care about human rights and our humanity. In my episode, I talk about the…

An Explosion of Settler Violence in Huwara and What It Means

The Palestinian town of Huwara was just violently attacked by a big mob of Israeli settlers. This is not an incident – it’s is all part of what a brutal system of military occupation, ethnic cleansing, and apartheid entails.

Stand with The People of Turkey And Syria

After the devastating earthquake, the people of Turkey and Syria desperately need our help. In invite you not to remain indifferent and support them in the ways that you can.

Don’t miss an update! Follow The Exploding Head

Get new content delivered directly to your inbox.





2 thoughts on “What Do We Have To Know About The Frozen Afghan Funds?

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s

%d bloggers like this: