|
Taliban cash { October 13 2001 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A52702-2001Oct12.htmlhttp://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A52702-2001Oct12.html
U.S. Froze $254 Million In Taliban Cash in 1999
State Dept. Opposes Using Assets for Terror Victims
By Marc Kaufman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, October 13, 2001; Page A16
Two years ago, President Bill Clinton signed an executive order freezing $254 million in Taliban assets in the United States, more than twice the amount linked to terrorist groups and seized worldwide since the Sept. 11 attacks.
U.S. officials will not disclose where the $254 million came from, except to say that it was under the control of the Taliban. But the large sum, contrasted with the very small amount of trade between the United States and Afghanistan, has raised questions about the source of the money.
The $254 million seizure, described in a Treasury Department report on terrorist assets in January, has taken on new significance because of the Sept. 11 attacks, as some legislators and lawyers work to make it easier to compensate victims of terrorist attacks from frozen assets. The State Department opposes that effort, and so far legal judgments have been paid in only a few cases from frozen assets of Iran and Cuba.
While Afghanistan has not been officially deemed a terrorist state, the Taliban money was frozen by the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Asset Controls (OFAC) in 1999, after attacks on American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. The order accused the Taliban of harboring Osama bin Laden and his organization.
OFAC officials said they could not detail where the $254 million came from other than to report that $1.7 million was seized offshore. Soon after the money was frozen, however, a National Security Council spokesman said it included $500,000 from the Afghan airline.
Additional information from United Nations documents filed earlier this year indicates that the United States has complied with Security Council directives blocking assets of several Afghan banks, the national airline, Ariana, and the individual accounts of more than 150 Taliban leaders. Former Afghan government officials said the frozen money was held in American accounts at institutions including Citibank and Bank of America.
The source of the money is a mystery to the last Afghan chargé d'affaires in Washington, Yar Mohabbat. He served as the Afghan government's official representative from 1994 until 1997, when the State Department closed the embassy after Taliban officials forcibly sought to take it over. The United States has not officially recognized any government in Afghanistan since then.
Mohabbat said that until the embassy was closed, he constantly struggled to find money to keep the building open. He said that the Afghan government was trying to buy some parts from Boeing for its small fleet of airplanes but that he was aware of no other plans for major purchases. In 1998, the year before sanctions were imposed on Afghanistan, the total trade between the United States and Taliban-controlled portions of the country was $24 million.
"I am very surprised to hear of this money, and think it should be investigated very thoroughly," Mohabbat said. "We used small heaters in our offices because we couldn't afford to use our furnace."
With no other way to explain the $254 million, Mohabbat said he suspected the money included profits from drug sales. Afghanistan became a major supplier of opium for heroin in the 1990s, and Asa Hutchinson, head of the Drug Enforcement Administration, told Congress last week that the Taliban's "modest economy is dependent upon opium." Officials from the DEA and State Department office on international narcotics said they were unaware of any inquiries into the source of the $254 million in Taliban money.
Rep. Chris Cannon (R-Utah) has sponsored legislation to make it easier for victims of terrorism to collect from frozen assets, and he believes the Taliban money should be available to those harmed by bin Laden and his al Qaeda network.
"If people go to court and can get a judgment that their family member died because of Osama bin Laden and the Taliban, then they should be able to collect from money we have frozen," Cannon said. "This is an important principle that the House has already supported several times."
But the State Department has fought the idea for years. The department succeeded in having Cannon's amendment eliminated yesterday from the anti-terrorism bill.
A State Department official said the opposition was based on concern that it would undermine efforts to use frozen assets as diplomatic bargaining chips and would be unfair to terrorist victims who didn't file lawsuits.
Cannon said that he would reintroduce the amendment as a stand-alone bill next week and that he expected to have bipartisan support.
Washington lawyer Steven Perles won $54 million from frozen assets to pay judgments in four cases involving Iranian-backed terrorists in Israel, the Gaza Strip and Lebanon. The only other judgments paid from frozen assets involve $97 million paid to the families of Cuban American pilots shot down by the Cuban government.
"It took an act of Congress to overcome State Department opposition," Perles said. "The Treasury Department was also unhelpful."
Texas lawyer James Cooper-Hill could not collect legal judgments for his clients, who had been captured and detained by Iraq. "Congress passed a bill last year that says the State Department should make every effort to facilitate the payments" from frozen assets, he said. "But they will not do anything for victims."
Former deputy treasury secretary Stuart E. Eizenstat, who worked on the frozen asset issue for the Clinton administration, said it would harm American interests to pay frozen Taliban assets to victims of bin Laden.
"That money could be a real sweetener to get a more pro-Western government in Afghanistan after the Taliban," he said. "It's called Taliban money here now, but it should be available to return to the government and people over there when they have new leaders."
© 2001 The Washington Post Company
|
|
