DAILY CALLER NEWS FOUNDATION—An “increased risk” exists that at least $293 million in U.S. aid disbursed by the State Department in Afghanistan between March and November 2022 could fall into the Taliban’s hands, a new report finds.
Two subagencies of the State Department—the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor and the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs—provided incomplete documentation and therefore could not establish that they had complied with counterterrorism vetting requirements, the report says.
The report was prepared by the Office of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, or SIGAR.
Members of the Taliban have attempted to capture U.S. funds meant to provide aid to the people of Afghanistan since the U.S.-designated terrorist organization took over the country again in August 2021.
“The risk of Taliban-founded NGOs, or other organizations that could funnel money to terrorist groups, benefiting from U.S. taxpayer funds underscores the importance of [the State Department] complying with its own vetting and document retention requirements,” the report reads.
“As the U.S. government continues to provide assistance to the people of Afghanistan, it is vital that State complies with its partner-vetting requirements intended to prevent the department from awarding U.S. taxpayer funds to individuals and entities with ties to terrorism,” it says.
Officials at the U.S. Agency for International Development told SIGAR that their agency had heard reports of over 1,000 new nongovernmental organizations registering with the Taliban and that many of those groups are affiliated with terrorists.
The State Department requires officials to perform risk assessments before awarding funds to Afghan entities, leveraging an array of public and nonpublic information to gauge how likely it is that potential partners have ties to terrorist organizations.
The State Department told SIGAR that its two subagencies didn’t retain some documents related to these vetting processes and, therefore, the documents couldn’t be provided to investigators. Noncompliance with the State Department’s counterterrorism partner-vetting protocols creates an “increased risk” that American tax dollars could end up in the hands of the Taliban, according to the report.
SIGAR recommended that the State Department take immediate action to make sure its subagencies are complying with counterterrorism vetting requirements.
There is some evidence that taxpayer funds have fallen into the hands of the Taliban since the United States’ withdrawal from Afghanistan. In May, SIGAR uncovered that $1.3 million flowed to the terror organization through the State Department’s Office of Weapons Removal and Abatement in Afghanistan. The Taliban also has interfered with American humanitarian operations in the country, with individuals linked to USAID’s $102 million “Democracy, Gender and Rights Program” in Afghanistan being detained by terrorists.
Three years after the United States left Afghanistan, the country has experienced famine, erosion of women’s rights, and proliferation of terrorist organizations such as ISIS and al-Qaeda.
“Afghanistan has not returned to a pre-9/11 state—in many ways it is much worse now, as our disastrous withdrawal has fueled a new global enthusiasm for Islamic extremism,” Simone Ledeen, former deputy assistant defense secretary for the Middle East, previously told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
“The Biden administration’s denials about the real and growing threat from Afghanistan are consistent with their reality-denying assertions that their withdrawal was a success and that no American service members have been killed on their watch (a false assertion President Joe Biden made in June),” Ledeen said. “The warning lights are flashing red.”
Congress established SIGAR in 2008 to monitor government expenditures in Afghanistan during the war on terror and it now tracks the United States’ post-withdrawal spending there.
The State Department and the two involved subagencies did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Originally published by the Daily Caller News Foundation