KABUL, Feb. 15 (Xinhua) -- Thousands of Afghans came to the street in the capital Kabul on Tuesday, condemning the recent U.S. decision regarding the frozen Afghan assets as unjust and open stealing, and calling on Washington to return the assets of more than 9 billion U.S. dollars to the war-torn country.
With people carrying banners and placards with slogans reading "Biden the World Thief of 2022", "U.S. destroyed Afghanistan" and "America should return Afghanistan's assets", the demonstration march started from the main money exchange market Sarai Shahzada and ended peacefully in front of the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) office.
The demonstrators demanded the return without any condition of all the assets of the Afghan central bank that have been frozen by the United States following the Taliban's takeover of the Central Asian country in mid-August 2021.
The protest came in response to an executive order signed recently by U.S. President Joe Biden for diverting 3.5 billion U.S. dollars from the frozen Afghan assets to compensating the families of 9/11 terror attacks' victims.
At the end of the demonstration, the protestors issued a declaration terming the U.S. decision as a breach of international law and vowed to continue the protest until its revocation.
Hajj Mir Afghan Safi, head of Sarai Shahzada money changers union, said that Afghan people demonstrated in almost all big cities on Tuesday demanding the return of Afghanistan's assets.
Nasir Ahmad, a money changer said, "The money belongs to the hungry people of Afghanistan and should be returned to Afghans. And President Biden's decree with regard to the assets is unjust."
The U.S. freezing of the Afghan central bank's assets is widely seen as the primary factor leading to the current economic crisis and humanitarian disaster in the war-torn country of some 39 million people.
Deputy spokesman of the Taliban-led administration Inammullah Samangani and former Afghan president Hamid Karzai have both recently denounced Biden's decision as unjust and demanded the return of the frozen assets to Afghanistan. ■
