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:
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