(WASHINGTON) — President Joe Biden signed an executive order Friday setting in motion a plan to make $7 billion in Afghan funds held in the United States available to compensate victims of the Sept. 11 attacks, and to provide humanitarian relief and other support to the Afghan people dealing with crushing hunger, according to senior Biden administration officials.
The funds were deposited by Afghanistan’s central bank in the United States before the Taliban took over last year and have since been made unavailable to the Taliban. Much of the money comes from U.S. and other international donations over the past 20 years, according to the official.
The U.S. has struggled to determine how to provide aid to the Afghan people without money going to the Taliban.
Biden’s order would freeze the funds and set aside more than $3.5 billion for American victims of terrorism who are pursuing litigation against the Taliban, according to the officials. The money would be available to them pending the outcomes of their litigation, the officials said.
The administration would also ask a court to allow for the rest of the funds to be placed into a trust fund to be used “for the benefit of the Afghan people and for Afghanistan’s future,” a senior administration official said.
A senior administration official said the U.S. government would “take a couple of months” to figure out exactly how the fund would work and how the money would be used. Another official told ABC News the money would go toward humanitarian relief and “other needs.”
“We have not made specific decisions about how the funds will be used,” the senior official said.
That plan would have to clear several procedural and legal steps, including gaining legal approval, receiving a license from the Treasury Department and going through a due diligence process by the Federal Reserve, an official said.
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