Business
9/11 families cannot stop US decision on Afghan asset seizure
A U.S. judge on Friday rejected a request by families of victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks not to enforce his decision against letting them seize $3.5 billion of frozen Afghan central bank assets.
The families, comprising more than 10,000 people, had asked U.S. District Judge George Daniels in Manhattan to put his Feb.21 decision on hold while they appeal, Reuters reported.
They cited the public interest in enforcing terrorism-related judgments, and the “irreparable harm” they would face if assets belonging to Da Afghanistan Bank, or DAB, the central bank, were freed up.
But the judge said the families’ appeal was unlikely to succeed and there was no irreparable harm because of President Joe Biden’s Feb. 3 executive order on Afghanistan’s humanitarian crisis that extended the asset freeze by one year.
“An important public interest lies in the enforcement of terrorism judgments,” Daniels wrote. “But that enforcement must be in accordance with the U.S. Constitution, federal statutes, and state law.”
In ruling against the families, Daniels said awarding them the frozen assets would effectively recognize the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEA) as Afghanistan’s legitimate government, which the Biden administration has not done.
Daniels said it was for the IEA, and “not the former Islamic Republic of Afghanistan or the Afghan people,” to pay for its own liability in the Sept. 11 attacks, in which nearly 3,000 people died.
Biden froze about $7 billion of DAB funds at the Federal Reserve Bank in New York in February 2022, six months after the IEA took over in Afghanistan. The president ordered $3.5 billion set aside to benefit the Afghan people, leaving the rest for the families to pursue.
The Ministry of Commerce and Industry said Thursday it has signed cooperation agreements with ten institutions to support the development of small and medium-sized enterprises.
Nooruddin Azizi, Acting Minister of Commerce and Industry, said: “In the implementation of projects, we must pay special attention to our activities and actions and try to make useful use of the projects according to the requirements and benefit the beneficiaries.”
These ten institutions are to present their projects, the total value of which is around over $1.1 million. The projects will be carried out in Kabul, Baghlan, Ghor, Herat, Logar, Nangarhar, Balkh, Badakhshan and Jawzjan provinces and provide direct jobs for about 1,000.
To date, the ministry has signed MoUs for 72 projects in total, collectively valued at about $53.6 million.
These agreements have been signed with domestic and foreign companies for the establishment of small and medium-sized businesses.
In accordance with the principles and laws of the Islamic Emirate and prioritizing the implementation of projects for immigrants and returnees and internally displaced people, the ministry said 635,865 people will benefit through jobs directly and over 4.3 million will benefit indirectly in 25 provinces once these projects are implemented.
The National Statistics and Information Authority (NSIA) confirmed Tuesday that in the last month of solar year 1402, (March 2024) Afghanistan’s exports totaled $141.1 million and imports totaled $789.6 million.
This was down from $174 million for exports in the same period in 1401. However, imports increased by $99.2 million in 1402, up from $690.4 million.
Most exports in the last month of 1402 went to Pakistan, India and the United Arab Emirates, while in the last month of 1401 exports went to Pakistan, India and China.
The Ministry of Interior said the governor of Herat province Islam Jar met with Alim Khan Yasin Gildaye, Ambassador of Kazakhstan to Afghanistan, to discuss various issues around trade.
According to the ministry, the two sides discussed the expansion of trade facilities, increasing the volume of trade exchanges between traders of the two countries, reducing customs tariffs, solving the challenges of traders and issuing visas to them.
The Afghanistan-Kazakhstan Chamber of Commerce has been opened in Herat in order to facilitate and increase trade between the two countries.
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