VOI - Voice of Indonesia | RRI - Radio Republik Indonesia

FILE PHOTO: A displaced Afghan woman holds her child as she waits with other women to receive aid supply outside an UNCHR distribution center on the outskirts of Kabul, Afghanistan October 28, 2021. REUTERS/Zohra Bensemra -

The Biden administration is seeking to free up half of the US$7 billion in frozen Afghan central bank assets on US soil to help the Afghan people while holding the rest to possibly satisfy terrorism-related lawsuits against the Taliban, the White House said on Friday (Feb 11).

President Joe Biden signed an executive order declaring a national emergency to deal with the threat of an economic collapse in Afghanistan, setting the wheels in motion for a complex resolution of competing interests in the Afghan assets.

The US Justice Department is due on Friday to present a plan to a federal judge on what to do with the frozen funds amid urgent calls from US lawmakers and the United Nations for the money to be used to address the dire economic crisis that has worsened since the Taliban's takeover of Afghanistan in August.

Senior US administration officials said they would work to ensure access to US$3.5 billion of the assets - which stem mainly from aid to Afghanistan over the past two decades - to benefit the Afghan people.

They said Washington would set up a third-party trust in coming months to administer the funds but details were still being worked out on how that entity would be structured and how the funds could be used.

The multi-step plan calls for the other half of the funds to remain in the United States, subject to ongoing litigation by US victims of terrorism, including relatives of those who died in the Sep 11, 2001, hijacking attacks, the officials said.

Washington froze the Afghan funds after the Taliban's military takeover in August, but has faced pressure to find a way to release the money without recognizing the new Afghan administration, which says it is theirs.

Suhail Shaheen, the Taliban’s designated representative to the United Nations, called for the entire amount to be unfrozen and kept under control of the Afghan central bank.

"The reserve is the property of Da Afghanistan Bank and by extension, the property of the people of Afghanistan. We want the unfreezing of the entire amount as a reserve of Da Afghanistan Bank," Shaheen told Reuters.

The spokesman of the Taliban’s Doha office blasted the US move in a tweet: "Stealing and takeover of frozen money which belongs to the Afghan people by US shows the lowest level of human and moral decline of a country and a nation."

Control over the funds is complicated by lawsuits filed by some Sep 11 victims and their families seeking to cover unsatisfied court judgments related to the attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people.

Biden's new executive order requires US financial institutions to transfer all Afghan central bank assets held into a consolidated account at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

Afghanistan has another US$2 billion in reserves, held in countries including Britain, Germany, Switzerland and the United Arab Emirates. Most of those funds are also frozen. US officials said they had been in touch with allies about the frozen assets, but Washington was the first to offer a plan for how to use them to help the Afghan people.

The United States, the largest single donor of humanitarian aid in Afghanistan, also plans to keep working with the UN and humanitarian aid groups on separate US aid flows, the officials said, adding that they expected significant multilateral engagement in creation of the new trust fund.

Washington is also working closely with the UN to ensure the international body's agencies and aid groups have the liquidity needed to support critical humanitarian assistance programs, the White House said.

Reuters reported on Thursday that the UN aims to kickstart a system to swap millions of aid dollars for Afghan currency that would help solve that issue.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has called for a mechanism to free up about US$9.5 billion in frozen Afghan reserves, including in the United States.

US sanctions ban financial business with the Taliban, but Washington has granted waivers to allow humanitarian support for the Afghan people. A new license will be needed to allow transfers from the envisioned trust, officials said//CNA

FILE PHOTO: Philip Goldberg, then U.S. Ambassador to Colombia, speaks during the announcement of the granting of legal status of temporary protection to Venezuelan migrants, in Bogota, Colombia February 8, 2021. REUTERS/Luisa Gonzalez/File Photo - 

US President Joe Biden announced on Friday (Feb 11) he intends to nominate Philip Goldberg, a career diplomat and a former North Korea sanctions enforcer, as ambassador to South Korea, a White House statement said.

Goldberg has served since 2019 as ambassador to Colombia and previously as charge d'affaires in Cuba and ambassador to the Philippines and Bolivia, among other postings.

Goldberg also worked as coordinator for the implementation of United Nations sanctions on North Korea over its nuclear weapons and missile programs from 2009 to 2010.

Reuters reported plans for Goldberg's nomination last month.

The post in one of the United States' key allies has been filled by a charge d'affaires for more than a year since the last ambassador to South Korea, former navy Admiral Harry Harris, stepped down when Biden took office in January 2021.

While Seoul and Washington insist their alliance is "iron-clad," the sanctions have been a source of controversy as they blocked South Korean President Moon Jae-in's desire for more economic engagement with North Korea.

Harris' tenure was marked by tension in the alliance as then-President Donald Trump pressed Seoul to pay billions of dollars more toward supporting the roughly 28,500 US troops stationed there, while South Korea chafed at the US push for strict sanctions enforcement.

The nomination of Goldberg, who faces a Senate confirmation hearing, comes at a time of heightened tensions on the Korean peninsula over a spate of missile tests by North Korea, which has long been seeking relief from US and international sanctions.

The tests have included the first of an intermediate range ballistic missile since 2017, raising fears that North Korea may resume tests of intercontinental ballistic missiles and nuclear bombs for the first time since that year.

Biden's administration has repeatedly urged North Korea to return to dialogue aimed at persuading the reclusive state to give up its nuclear weapons programs but has been rebuffed, with Pyongyang saying it would not engage further unless Washington dropped hostile policies//CNA

A girl sits in front of a bakery in the crowd with Afghan women waiting to receive bread in Kabul, Afghanistan, Jan 31, 2022. (Photo: REUTERS/Ali Khara) - 

Switzerland has raised concerns about human rights in Afghanistan, including about girls' education, in a meeting with the Taliban, a government spokesman said on Friday (Feb 11), as the new rulers in Kabul wrapped up a week of talks in Geneva.

The trip is seen as a key step in Taliban efforts to boost outreach efforts as they seek to persuade foreign powers to officially recognise them and restore the aid money that has been cut off in protest of their takeover last August.

The delegation met with Swiss officials as well as the Red Cross and other humanitarian groups in the talks that touched on aid needs, security concerns and health care, according to participants who attended the closed-door talks.

In an emailed response to questions, foreign ministry spokesperson Paola Ceresetti said Switzerland had raised the issue of abductions and reprisals including the targeting of reporters, without specifically discussing the detention of two journalists reported by the UN Refugee Agency on Friday.

Berne had also raised the "systematic exclusion" of girls and women from education, politics, society and public life and said it expected girls to be back in school in March, she said.

Under their previous rule from 1996 to 2001, the hardline Islamist Taliban barred women and girls from education. They say they have since changed but they have been vague on their plans and high school-aged girls in many provinces have still not been allowed to return to school.

A handful of female activists gathered outside the delegation's hotel earlier this week while a few dozen people protested outside the UN headquarters in Geneva on Friday, a police spokesperson confirmed.

Ceresetti denied that the talks amounted to official recognition of the Taliban and stressed that it was important to maintain dialogue. "We talk to everyone," she said.

WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who met with Afghanistan's acting health minister Qalandar Ebad earlier this week during the same trip, also called on countries and organisations "to continue with dialogue to support the people of Afghanistan".

Geneva Call, the humanitarian group that hosted the talks, said that the Taliban delegation had signed a closing statement that pledged to promote humanitarian access, respect female health workers and help clear mines//CNA

FILE PHOTO: Evacuees from Afghanistan board a military aircraft during an evacuation from Kabul, in this photo taken on August 19, 2021 at undisclosed location and released on August 20, 2021. Staff Sgt. Brandon Cribelar/U.S. Marine Corps/Handout via REUTERS - 

Afghan refugees held in the United Arab Emirates for months since fleeing Afghanistan last year protested for a third day on Friday (Feb 11), calling for resettlement to the United States.

The demonstrations by hundreds of Afghans began on Wednesday at the centre where they are being housed as months of frustrations with what refugees say is a lack of communication over the resettlement process boiled over.

A protestor told Reuters by phone more refugees had joined the protest on Friday, a day after a US official visited the centre and told them it could take years for applications to be processed.

Many refugees, however, were unlikely to ever be resettled in the United States, the official told them, according to the protestor.

Ahmad Mohibi, an advocate who has helped Afghans evacuate, including to the UAE, and who is contact with several refugees there, said Afghans planned to continue peaceful protests.

The refugees, he said, were appreciative of the care the UAE has provided them but were exasperated by the uncertainty over how much longer they would have to remain at the Abu Dhabi centre.

The US Embassy in Abu Dhabi and the Emirati government have not commented on the protests. The refugees have complained about prison-like conditions in the centre.

The UAE agreed with Washington and other Western countries last year to temporarily house Afghan nationals evacuated from Afghanistan as they made their way to a third country.

It is unclear how many Afghans refugees are being housed in the UAE, though demonstrators and advocates estimate there are 12,000 temporarily living at two locations in Abu Dhabi.

Afghans have protested outside a US government representative office at one of the centres in Abu Dhabi, holding banners pleading for freedom and urging the US to resettle them.

The US is prioritising those with visas or applications but two sources familiar with cases of refugees in Abu Dhabi said most there had neither.

Advocates say while it is believed thousands of refugees there have a legal path to the United States, many others do not.

They say the refugees include people who had worked with the US government, military and for Afghan forces before the withdrawal of Western forces last August. The Western-backed government collapsed and the hardline Islamist Taliban movement took over the country.

Mohibi said he was coordinating with other advocates and charities to raise the Afghans' concerns directly with the US government//CNA