It’s hard to imagine the US government doling out taxpayers’ money, knowing that it flows to Taliban extremists who impose their religious fanaticism on long-suffering Afghans.
But that’s what auditors have uncovered about the Biden administration’s bungling State Department.
Two foreign affairs teams in 2022 provided $293 million of humanitarian aid to Afghan nonprofits without checking carefully enough that the recipients were above board.
That created an ‘increased risk’ of taxpayer money ending up in the hands of the Taliban and their terrorist buddies, auditors said.
Worse still, the revelations from the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) are just the tip of the iceberg.
Taliban gunman seized the capital Kabul in August 2021. Fighters are seen here celebrating at a national holiday
President Joe Biden and his Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who oversaw the poorly administered aid flows
Millions more has gone missing from the more than $17.9 billion the US has sent to Afghanistan since 2021, when US forces withdrew from the country as the Taliban swept back to power.
Western donors know that monies go missing when helping impoverished and war-ridden countries, but they’re supposed to ensure transfers don’t flow to crooks and extremists.
Adam Andrzejewski, the founder of OpenTheBooks, a government spending watchdog, said American voters should expect much more from Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s team.
‘If a federal agency cannot ensure that taxpayer money is not supporting terrorism, it should not be entrusted with the money in the first place,’ Andrzejewski says.
His expected Democratic rival, Vice President Kamala Harris, has yet to define her foreign policy, but is nevertheless tied to her boss Joe Biden’s humiliating exit from Afghanistan.
The SIGAR audit examined five bureaus that had active awards in Afghanistan between March and November 2022.
Three could show they had followed foreign aid vetting rules.
But the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor and the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement could not show tracking paperwork for at least $293 million of aid they distributed, auditors said.
Those units should have tried harder, the auditors said.
It was known among US aid and development chiefs to be suspicious of the more than 1,000 Afghan non-profits that sprang up in the country after 2021 and registered with the Taliban-run finance ministry.
Auditors referred to widely-known ‘rumors’ that these non-profit startups ‘may have Taliban affiliations.’
Because the audit only covered nine months in 2022, it is likely that much more than $293 million has been badly tracked.
Aid chiefs struggle to keep tabs on aid money flows into Afghanistan. Pictured: Currency exchange dealers in Kabul
The Taliban have stopped girls’ education beyond the sixth grade and banned women from many jobs.
John Sopko, special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction, delved into how UN money gets to Afghanistan and tracked it to the country’s central bank
American greenbacks land in the Afghan capital Kabul, courtesy of the the United Nations
The State Department has acknowledged its failures and agreed to start vetting funding flows properly.
Federal watchdogs have repeatedly called out the department for failing to track the billions it’s sent to Afghanistan these past three years.
A SIGAR investigation published in May showed that some $10.9 million in US taxpayer money ended up in the hands of the Taliban, mostly through taxes that partners paid to the group.
Another report in March showed that some $2.9 billion in cash that the United Nations flew into Afghanistan ended up lining the pockets of the hardliners.
The money, most of which comes from the US, is deposited in private banks for aid groups and their lifesaving work.
But some of it, the report concludes, is routed through the Taliban-run central bank.
‘Most of the money that’s going in cash through the UN is ultimately coming from US taxpayers,’ said John Sopko, the inspector general.
‘It’s going to a terrorist group. The Taliban are a bunch of terrorists.’
The US and other foreign donors scaled back their assistance after the collapse of the internationally-backed government in 2021 amid concerns that the Taliban would use the money for their own ends.
The Taliban seized control of the country in August 2021 as American troops and their international partners departed.
The speed of the takeover surprised the Pentagon and intelligence community, leaving government agencies and the UN scrambling to ensure that the Taliban couldn’t profit from aid programs.
The US remains the largest aid donor to the country of 43 million people, where half the population lives in poverty and 15 million don’t know where their next meal is coming from.
Since taking over, the Taliban have stopped girls’ education beyond the sixth grade and banned women from many jobs and most public spaces.
Restrictions on women and girls are a major obstacle to the Taliban gaining official recognition as the country’s legitimate government.
The Taliban were not immediately available for comment on the report.
