ABC‘s website had an AP report (2/13/22) on Biden’s misappropriation of Afghan funds—but nothing on its TV news programs.
Two months ago (FAIR.org, 12/21/21), I noted the striking contrast between vocal media outrage—ostensibly grounded in concern for Afghan people—over President Joe Biden’s withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan, and the relative silence over the growing humanitarian crisis in that country, which threatens millions with life-threatening levels of famine.
While influenced by drought and Taliban policies, the current crisis is primarily driven by the US decisions to freeze the assets of the country’s central bank and maintain economic sanctions, which have destabilized the banking system and sent the economy into a tailspin.
Last Friday, Biden announced his intention to take the $7 billion in frozen funds currently held in US banks and use them as he sees fit, giving half to a humanitarian aid trust fund for Afghans and half to families of 9/11 victims.
Lest anyone imagine this to be generous in any way, note that the $7 billion—most of which originated as international aid, and representing the vast majority of the central bank’s assets—belongs to the Afghan people, not to Biden. And the Afghan people bear zero responsibility for the 9/11 attacks. On the contrary, they are also its victims, because of the subsequent US decision to invade and occupy their country.
Beyond that, giving them back half of the money that is rightfully theirs in the form of “aid”—instead of returning it to the banking system—is not only a band-aid that doesn’t solve the country’s liquidity problem, it’s nearly impossible to do anyway, given the sanctions still in place (Relief Web, 2/12/21).
Biden’s announcement offered a perfect hook for reporting on the humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan, and anyone who truly cares about the Afghan people and their rights should be tearing their hair out and screaming at the top of their lungs about this audacious injustice that will surely result in more deaths and hardship. But despite their wailing about the Taliban’s impact on Afghan women’s futures, few in US TV news seem concerned about those same women facing starvation as a result of US policy.
Since Biden’s announcement on February 11, there have been a total of 10 mentions on ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, Fox and MSNBC: six the day of the announcement, four the next day, and none by the third day. The broadcast network news shows, which have more viewers than cable news, aired exactly zero reports on the issue. CNN made seven mentions, MSNBC two and Fox one. Six of the ten were brief mentions that noted no criticism of the move.
Masuda Sultan to Chris Hayes (MSNBC, 2/11/22): “This was a devastating day for Afghans who were hoping to have a sign that their economy would have a chance of surviving.”
Only two shows deemed the story big enough to bring on a guest to discuss it: Jake Tapper‘s CNN show (2/11/22) and Chris Hayes‘ MSNBC show (2/11/22). Hayes devoted the last several minutes of his show to an interview with guest Masuda Sultan of the group Unfreeze Afghanistan. Hayes noted that the US “could help [the Afghan] people by simply doing one thing, unfreezing of the billions of dollars of Afghan government assets that are sitting in New York banks,” and Sultan argued that Biden’s move would simply create “a bigger and bigger humanitarian disaster, by not allowing banking to function and not allowing the economy to be back on its feet”:
What Afghans need more than anything, is food, indeed, they need aid, but they also need jobs, they need an economy, they need to be able to import food, they need to be able to pay their teachers, pay their healthcare workers. You know, all of these sort of normal functions that you expect to happen in a country are now crippled.
Tapper, in contrast, invited a family member of a 9/11 victim for her perspective on the decision. (Tapper did ask his guest to respond to “the people who say this is just penalizing, this move today, the Afghan people who are suffering greatly, and they shouldn’t be hurt because of what happened on 9/11.”)
Austin Ahlman (Intercept, 2/11/22): “The decision puts Biden on track to cause more death and destruction in Afghanistan than was caused by the 20 years of war that he ended.”
CNN‘s Newsroom (2/11/22) and New Day Saturday (2/12/22) were the only other two shows to even briefly mention any criticisms or questions about the legitimacy or efficacy of the decision.
On Newsroom, reporter Jeremy Diamond noted that “there are questions, though, about whether taking these funds away from the central bank could make it more difficult for Afghanistan to stabilize its currency.”
A serious report would have explained that these aren’t merely questions, they’re certainties, and Biden knows it. As a senior Democratic foreign policy aide told the Intercept‘s Austin Ahlman (2/11/22), Biden
has had warnings from the UN secretary general, the International Rescue Committee and the Red Cross, with a unanimous consensus that the liquidity of the central bank is of paramount importance, and no amount of aid can compensate for the destruction of Afghanistan’s financial system and the whole macro economy.
On CNN, Diamond’s colleague Jim Sciutto concluded: “Trying to strike some sort of middle line here between not helping the Taliban, but somehow getting help urgently to the Afghan people.”
It’s the best possible framing a murderous multi-billion-dollar theft could get.
Correction: An earlier version of this article overstated the number of CNN mentions of Biden’s announcement; there were seven, not eight.
Biden and Blinken: OMG, YOU are taking Afghanistans’ money to pay 9/11 victims? ARE you 2 guys crazy? 9/11 was Saudi Arabia—so— oh wait, yes, I guess after giving the US military even more money—you found, gosh we’re coming up short here, so let’s screw over Afghanistan??? Is that the plan?
Biden and Blinken—screwing the world
Biden and Blinken—give it a whirl!
But People are starving!
You guys are alarming!
And Your actions make me want to HURL!
Western “rescue parties” always inflict far more damage than any original disaster:
As they searched in vain
For some others to blame,
for the things that they “did not” do…
Those who didn’t applaud
The white version of god,
were those referenced in: “We’re coming for you!”
Nice Rhyme Bradley Grower!
Western values:
We lied we cheated we stole
The MOST disgusting part of this clip, is the fact that even after having mentioned that he was taught the EXACT OPPOSITE of this philosophy at West Point Military Academy, dozens of U.S. citizens in the audience applauded Pompeo’s admission to actual wrongdoing.
I believe we are still stealing oil from Syrian oilfields and how many oil tankers have we pirated? Even the Brits have confiscated Venezuelan gold.
And the USA froze Venezulan monies as well. Just a crime in broad daylight.
This robbery of starving Afghans and his support for Saudi Arabia’s war on Yemen are Biden’s most deplorable and sadistic actions.
Indeed, Biden’s move is theft! If the 9/11 families still need money it should be taken from the Saudis whose evil men and ideology carried out the attack.
The innocent Afghans suffered not just a day but twenty years of war. Now their money has been stolen as they starve. It’s outrageous.
Thank you FAIR for pointing out this terrible injustice.
Biden has been guilty of many crimes of omission, given his fairly useless role enacting his campaign agenda, but this might be his biggest single crime of commission. Maybe he can top that by stirring up a war in The Ukraine, Mike Liston
By all definition, what is happening in Afghanistan is plain and simple robbery and a genocide.
This is so depressing and disgraceful. I remember so many of my acquaintances agonizing over the US withdrawal from Afghanistan. “Think of the women and children,” they cried — spurred on by pro-occupation propaganda on their “trusted” news sites. Now those same people are conveniently oblivious to the plight of starving Afghans, including women and children. Sometimes I just want to scream.
Stealing their money from starving people is murder and a war crime. The Afghans had no part in the 911 attack on the World Trade Center towers. The pilots of the planes were mostly Saudi Arabian subjects. No Afghans were involved imvolved. Therefor any money they seek to get is blood money, or sue the Saudis. They have a lot of money, and were complicit perpetrators in the attack.
Well, got 80 billion in black market top line American weapons you can sell…
The lies told about the reasons to invade Afghanistan are the same lies that were told about the reasons to invade Iraq. Neither nation was responsible for 9/11 and none of the hijackers were Afghan nor Iraqi. There were nineteen hijackers and fifteen of them were Saudis.
After the Russians left Afghanistan in 1989 and after the Communist government fell in 1992, the world ignored Afghanistan and did nothing to help it recover from ten years of war.
The US invaded Afghanistan after 9/11/01 and the Coalition Forces were there twenty years, twice as long as the Russians. Now, the US and many of its allies are strangling Afghanistan’s economy with sanctions and blame all the problems going on there on the Taliban.
The Saudi war in Yemen is another topic that barely gets any media attention, the war has been going on for a long time and people there are starving.
Perhaps the rest of the world will learn the folly of entrusting their sovereign wealth to financial institutions in the US and Britain, which with complete impunity steal it like common thieves.
I haven’t seen CNN or Washington Post say a word about this.
New York Times printed one essay since the above was posted.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/20/opinion/afghanistan-starvation-biden.html