China to Host Afghanistan's Neighbors to Review Post-Taliban Situation

Islamabad — 

Pakistan said Friday foreign ministers of six immediate neighbors of Afghanistan will gather in China next month to discuss economic and humanitarian upheavals facing the Taliban-ruled, conflict-torn country.

Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi told a news conference in Islamabad that his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov, will also attend the Beijing-hosted two-day meeting starting March 30.

Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi gestures while addressing the members of the media in Islamabad, Feb. 25, 2022.

Qureshi said the discussions would focus on ways to protect the Afghan people from the humanitarian crisis and prevent an economic meltdown in Afghanistan.

“If there is, God forbid, an economic meltdown (in Afghanistan), its repercussions will hit not only Pakistan but other neighboring countries and the region at large,” Qureshi cautioned.

The gathering in China will be the third such dialogue among Afghanistan’s neighbors, including China, Iran, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, since the Taliban takeover of the country in August.

Islamabad initiated and hosted the inaugural session of the process in September after the Taliban militarily seized power from the now-defunct Western-backed Afghan government and U.S.-led international forces withdrew from the country.

Tehran hosted the second foreign ministers’ meeting in late October.

Trilateral on sideline

A senior Pakistani Foreign Ministry official told VOA that Taliban leaders will be invited to the two-day discussions in China to allow them to directly share their assessment of the latest Afghan situation.

The official, who requested anonymity because he is not authorized to speak to media, said a trilateral dialogue involving Afghanistan, Pakistan and China will also be held on the sidelines of the meeting.

He said Chinese and Pakistani officials are expected to discuss and propose economic connectivity projects to Taliban delegates under an ongoing mega-infrastructure development program China is funding in Pakistan. The official did not share further details.

FILE – Passengers ride in a newly built Orange Line Metro Train, a metro project planned under the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, a day after an official opening in the eastern city of Lahore, Oct. 26, 2020.

The program, known as the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), is hailed as a flagship of Beijing’s global Belt and Road Initiative. It has built roads, power plants and other infrastructure projects in Pakistan with Chinese investments over the past seven years.

“The two sides are ready to discuss with Afghanistan the extension of CPEC to Afghanistan,” read a joint statement issued at the end of wide-ranging bilateral talks President Xi Jinping hosted with Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan in Beijing earlier this month.

Taliban legitimacy

When the Taliban regained control of Afghanistan six months ago, wide-ranging international sanctions dating back to the Islamist group’s first time in power from 1996 to 2001 followed.

Washington and other Western nations also suspended financial aid to Kabul and immediately froze billions of dollars in the Afghan central bank’s assets, mostly held in the U.S.

The restrictions have pushed the country’s heavily aid-dependent economy to the brink of collapse, exacerbating the humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan, where the United Nations estimates around 23 million people, or 55 percent of the population, face acute hunger.

FILE – Afghan men stand in a queue for a program offered by Afghanistan’s Taliban government to tackle hunger, offering thousands of people wheat in exchange for labor, in Dasht-e-Padula of southern Kabul, Oct. 24, 2021.

Foreign countries, including immediate neighbors, have not recognized the Taliban as the legitimate ruler of Afghanistan.

The global community wants the hardline group to govern Afghanistan through a broad-based ruling system that represents all Afghan ethnicities, respects human rights, including women’s rights to education and work, and disallows terrorists from using the country for cross-border attacks.

Taliban leaders dismiss criticism of their government, saying it is representative of all Afghans, and women are being given access to education as well as work in accordance with Islamic Sharia law. They also claim no terrorist groups are being allowed to use the country for international attacks, assertions disputed by foreign officials and independent critics.

The Taliban under the previous government had banned females from education and work and harbored the al-Qaida terrorist network blamed for orchestrating the September 2001 attacks on the United States.

Biden Keeping Half of Afghanistan’s $7B in Assets for 9/11 Victims

The Taliban and the families of 9/11 victims are condemning the Biden administration’s move to split $7 billion in frozen assets from Afghanistan’s central bank and reserve half while U.S. courts consider victim families’ compensation claims. White House Bureau Chief Patsy Widakuswara reports.

Biden Keeping Half of Afghanistan’s $7B in Assets for 9/11 Victims

WHITE HOUSE — 

U.S. President Joe Biden signed an executive order Friday allowing approximately half of the $7 billion in frozen assets from Afghanistan’s central bank to be reserved for victims of the September 11, 2001, terror attacks.

The remaining assets, $3.5 billion, will be set aside in a trust fund slated for humanitarian assistance in Afghanistan, according to the White House.

The Taliban immediately condemned the move.

Mohammad Naeem, the spokesman for the Taliban’s political office in Doha, said in a tweet, “Stealing the Afghan people’s money that was frozen by the United States is the lowest a country could stoop to morally and humanly. Defeat and victory are part of human history but the greatest and scandalous defeat for a country or its people is when they suffer militarily and morally as well.”

The $7 billion in funds from Da Afghanistan Bank, the country’s central bank, that were on deposit at the Federal Reserve Bank in New York, have been frozen since then-President Ashraf Ghani’s government collapsed after the Taliban takeover at the end of August 2021. The country has experienced economic collapse and food insecurity since then.

Following the 2001 attacks, the Taliban, who were in control of Afghanistan at that time, refused to give in to U.S. demands to hand over Osama bin Laden, the mastermind of 9/11 and dismantle his terror group, al-Qaida. For years, the families of 9/11 victims have been pursuing financial compensation through U.S. courts and have renewed their efforts to claim it from the Taliban following the group’s takeover last year.

“A judge has already given a writ in our system in order to freeze those funds in place so that these claimants can have their case heard,” a senior Biden administration official told VOA when asked what the moral justification is for keeping funds belonging to the Afghan people – who were not responsible for the 9/11 attacks – for the 9/11 claimants.

The funds will be held while the claims of 9/11 victims move through the U.S. court systems until a decision is made “consistent with our country’s law and values,” the official said.

Some families of 9/11 victims criticized the decision.

“We firmly support the distribution of a large portion of these frozen assets to help mitigate the horrific humanitarian crisis and as aid to those suffering in Afghanistan today,” said Brett Eagleson, son of 9/11 victim Bruce Eagleson, in a statement on behalf of many in the 9/11 community. “However, for those funds intended for the 9/11 families, leaving this matter to a court, as this action by the Administration would do, will force the families of those killed on 9/11 to fight amongst each other. That is wrong, unfair and unjust.”

In a background briefing call with reporters, the Biden administration official acknowledged that this is “an unprecedented situation” where the U.S. is holding $7 billion in assets of a government they do not recognize.

“I think we are acting responsibly to ensure that a portion of that money can be used to benefit the people of the country,” he said.

It is also still unclear how the Biden administration plans to distribute the $3.5 billion for humanitarian needs of the Afghan people.

“We’re still working through the modalities of that trust fund and the governance structure of that trust fund, as well as the specific uses of the funds,” the official said.

“These are the reserves of the Afghan people, they’re not the reserves of the Taliban,” said Jacob Kurtzer to VOA. Kurtzer is director and senior fellow with the Humanitarian Agenda at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

“And so, freezing them and starting to divvy them out based on our own internal calculations, I think sends the wrong message to the people of Afghanistan about what role the United States is playing in terms of responding to the humanitarian, and really to the economic crisis that they’re experiencing,” he said.

Kurtzer said the moral imperative for the Biden administration now should be to help sustain the Afghan economy to not rely solely on humanitarian aid – a complicated task considering no country has given formal diplomatic recognition to the Taliban as the legitimate government in Kabul.

Dealing with the Taliban

Biden’s decision reflects the reality that the Taliban have not changed and are a rogue regime, said Husain Haqqani, director of South & Central Asia at the Hudson Institute.

“It is important to understand that the Taliban’s claim to assets of a government they fought to topple is just not justified,” Haqqani told VOA. “Taliban and their apologists have only been using the specter of a humanitarian disaster in Afghanistan to justify trying to take money that the international community had provided for a very different Afghanistan.”

The Biden administration official said that President Biden’s move is legally authorized by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, including the International Emergency Economic Powers Act that provides the president broad authority to regulate a variety of economic transactions following a declaration of national emergency.