President Joe Biden betrayed Afghanistan.
Had Biden not ordered the U.S. withdrawal, the Taliban would not occupy a single district capital let alone Kabul. Biden shirked responsibility by saying Afghan forces refused to fight, but Secretary of State Antony Blinken testified before the Senate that weaponry left behind was inoperable without U.S. contractors, all of whom had left. The White House cannot have it both ways, blaming Afghans but then seeking credit for denying them the means to fight.
The reality is that tens of thousands of Afghans who risked their lives to help Americans remain in Afghanistan, their Special Immigrant Visas unprocessed, as the Taliban systematically hunt them down. That the State Department continues to require papers that neither the Defense Department nor U.S. contractors provide simply adds insult to injury.
Now Biden betrays Afghans again.
Prior to the Taliban victory, Afghanistan kept the bulk of its reserves in the U.S. banks. Since seizing power, the Taliban have sought this $7 billion. On February 11, 2022, Biden announced that he would use half of that money to compensate victims of the 9/11 terrorist attacks and allocate the reminder to a trust fund to benefit the Afghan people.
Here’s the problem: Diverting $3.5 billion for 9/11 victims is theft. Certainly, the victims of al Qaeda terrorism deserve compensation, but the Afghan reserves belong to the Afghans who fought with the U.S. and against al Qaeda and the Taliban. Biden’s willingness to paint all Afghans as responsible for 9/11 is factually wrong if not racist. The trust fund may also sound noble, but it is problematic. The Taliban diverts aid to its supporters and uses it to pay Afghans for labor. In both cases, those who served the previous regime or helped Americans need not apply. Rather than condemn such diversions, the White House is silent.
This should not surprise. In 1994, Washington faced a similar problem in North Korea. To alleviate famine and facilitate diplomacy, President Bill Clinton agreed to provide both food aid and heavy fuel oil to the communist regime. Kim Jong-il’s regime diverted it to fund the army while ordinary citizens starved. Rather than acknowledge naivete, the State Department responded to a critical General Accounting Office report by blaming not the cheating, but the red tape that made diversions illegal.
Should Biden instead rely on the United Nations to administer the trust fund, the results could be worse. Iraq’s Oil-for-Food program, the UN’s previous experience with a humanitarian trust fund, became a cesspool of corruption, and that was before the organization siphoned off billions of dollars for overhead. To work through the UN is to waste Afghanistan’s money.
The UN is correct that Afghanistan faces a humanitarian crisis. Rather than rescue the Taliban, the international community should pressure them to step down. Given the fungibility of money, to absolve the Taliban of responsibility for Afghanistan’s humanitarian disaster would not only preserves their rule but also facilitates Taliban terrorism.
So what should the United States do?
Afghanistan’s reserves belong to the Afghan people. President Ashraf Ghani may have fled, but the elected Afghanistan government remains the recognized government. The U.S. should direct Afghanistan’s trust fund to help the Ghani’s vice president consolidate control, support refugees outside Taliban control, fund consular services for those Afghans who have fled abroad, and organize resistance to the Taliban. What Afghanistan faces is a humanitarian disaster, but to release Afghanistan money into Taliban-controlled areas will only strengthen the Taliban, reward their decades of their violence and terror, and compound tragedy.
Michael Rubin (@mrubin1971) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential. He is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
