Seeking the Wisdom of Solomon

"After our husbands were killed in the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, we have spent many years fighting to achieve justice on their behalf."

"Together with the others in our case, we obtained an enforceable money judgement against the Taliban and now call on President Biden to ensure the funds ... go to us and not the terrorists who played a role in taking the lives of our loved ones."

Fiona Havlish and Ellen Saracini, wives of 9/11 victims

 

"We think all 9/11 defendants should be treated the same and most everybody, if not all, have default judgments against the Taliban."

"We want to have that money divided proportionately among all the 9/11 death cases and not just a small group."

Andrew J. Maloney, lawyer for plaintiffs in a different Sept.11 victims case

 

"The court should disregard the suggestions and speculations of non-parties about how to manage this proceeding."

"If the Ashton plaintiffs ever do obtain final, enforceable judgments against the Taliban, the Havlish plaintiffs will be prepared to address the priority of those claims at that time.”

Timothy B. Fleming,  lawyer in the Havlish case

Family members and loved ones of those who died on 9/11 attend the 20th anniversary commemoration ceremony at the National September 11 Memorial & Museum in New York City. — AFP/File

 

The U.S. has withheld foreign reserves belonging to Afghanistan, but seized when the Taliban terrorist Islamists took re-possession of the country after the United States and its allies agreed to finally leave the country following two decades of ultimately fruitless attempts to ensure the Taliban would never return. In the interim, humanitarian aid groups and foreign missions helped bring Afghanistan into the modern era, building schools for both boys and girls to obtain an education, establishing health clinics, helping women find careers.

 

Now all of those advances will stagnate, back in the hands of the Taliban who excel in the violation of human rights. Wealthy nations that gave financial aid to Afghanistan abruptly turned off the spigot with the return of the Islamist fundamentalist group that had kept the country in a severe grip of human rights violations and lack of opportunity for people to find meaningful employment. The democratic facade that introduced the country to a version of equality and voting rights has been diminished once again.

 

Corruption, part of the culture of the country, will continue even as it now faces financial ruin. The returned Taliban has reversed much of what the previous, West-supported government gained for its people. People who now fear retribution from the Taliban if they worked for foreign agencies or governments, even for their own government through the military and the civil service. Girls are no longer assured of an education, and women's rights are fast dissolving in the chaotic misogyny linked to fundamentalist Islam.

 

Families in the country are struggling to adjust to their new reality. Almost a hundred thousand Afghans have left their country of birth, to escape Taliban rule and ruination, if not the threats inherent in their being perceived as 'traitors' to Islam for becoming too westernized. The United Nations warns that a huge percentage of the population faces food shortages and starvation. In this hopeless atmosphere of a country's descent into total dysfunction, victims of the 9/11 attack have launched lawsuits.

 

The families of those who died in the attacks on that infamous day in 2001 want the U.S. justice system to confiscate Afghanistan's foreign reserves to be treated as  damage payments against the Taliban. By all means that funding representing Afghanistan's foreign reserves should be kept from the unreconstructed Islamist tyranny, but the situation represents a conundrum; in ensuring the Taliban cannot take possession of the billions, neither do the people of Afghanistan in desperate straits gain aid so badly needed.

 

Afghan central bank funds of $7 billion locked in the Federal Reserve has gone to the courts, awaiting White House recommendations. According to lawyers representing the families in a range of court cases, the money is the Taliban's in their representation of the new government of the country. The argument is that it falls under a court judgement finding the terrorists responsible for the 9/11 atrocities since they gave haven to al-Qaeda. 

 

A country deep in a humanitarian crisis will be deprived of funding, seized so American claimants can be paid a form of recompense for the deaths of their loved ones has drawn criticism as a "grotesque" claim on a country, one of the poorest in the world whose international aid has been suspended with the return of the Taliban to power. Serving to slide the country into deeper economic decline. According to figures released by the United Nations, over three million Afghans are unable to find food, with over a million children at risk of starvation.

 

The U.S. families were awarded billions in damages against al-Qaeda, the Taliban and Iranian state groups for their roles in the attacks; the Taliban quite specifically since they proudly hosted Osama bin Laden even as he was planning the 9/11 attacks. Should the White House give its assent, the U.S. Justice Department is in discussion over the division of funding to bereaved families. Weeks earlier, the Taliban leadership had written to Congress in an appeal for the release of the funds.

 

Both Afghans themselves, along with officials from the international community claim the funds belong not to the Taliban but to the impoverished country. It would be best to try to alleviate the country's financial crisis with the funds. And as one senior international figure commented, it was "hard to imagine a more regressive transfer of wealth" [than to the Taliban]." 

"[The Biden administration] is scheduled to tell a federal court on Friday what outcome would be in the US national interest [— returning the money to Kabul or distributing it among the survivors and families of the 9/11 victims]."

"The US Justice Department has been negotiating with lawyers for the 9/11 plaintiffs a potential deal to divide up the money, if the government supports their attempt to seize it."

"The White House National Security Council has been working with agencies across the government to weigh the proposal."

The New York Times

The Taliban announced the acting cabinet for their new government in September. The group’s takeover of Afghanistan has raised the possibility that it could seize the Afghan government funds in New York.  Credit...Victor J. Blue for The New York Times