The $8 billion that the US sent to Afghanistan and ended up in Taliban hands is being blocked by the White House’s inspector.
The Biden administration is preventing an internal probe into how much of the $8 billion it has spent on Afghanistan since the disastrous 2021 US pullout from Kabul, according to a letter from the House Oversight Committee acquired by The Washington Post on Tuesday.
According to the letter, the Treasury and the State Department have repeatedly failed to deliver documents requested by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), John Sopko, and have explicitly forbidden their employees from participating in interviews with him.
In a letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, and USAID Administrator Samantha Power, the committee said that “this lack of cooperation is unacceptable.” The government will not shirk its responsibility to the American people for its disastrous failures in Afghanistan, nor will it ignore SIGAR’s crucial oversight role.
According to the office’s website, SIGAR, which was established by Congress in 2008 to audit US rebuilding projects and operations in the war-torn nation, strives to “promote efficiency and effectiveness” of such programs and “detect and prevent waste, fraud, and abuse.”
SIGAR is still a “critical partner in helping the committee assess issues related to security, humanitarian, economic and governance assistance to the Afghan people,” the congressmen wrote, almost two years after the last American forces departed Kabul. The committee said in its letter that “the administration’s refusal to cooperate with SIGAR has inhibited SIGAR’s ability to conduct independent, robust, and meaningful oversight.” The objective of SIGAR must continue to be carried out without interference as long as US taxpayer funds are still being used to help the Afghan people.
The committee, which is looking into the catastrophic departure and its effects, sent the letter after Sopko informed them earlier this month that the agencies’ lack of cooperation prevented his office from being able “to protect US taxpayer dollars from benefiting the Taliban and other terrorist organizations.”
He said, “I cannot report to this Committee or the American public on the degree to which our government may be sponsoring the Taliban and other criminal organizations with US taxpayer monies due to the failure of State or USAID to fully engage with SIGAR. The State Department “shockingly” informed Sopko’s office “that it didn’t know” how much money the Taliban had received from the UN, NGOs, or other organizations supplying international help, in addition to the administration’s refusal to provide details on US-sent aid, he said.
Sopko said that his agency discovered the Taliban had made money despite the Biden administration’s lack of cooperation by charging NGOs, adding customs fees to assistance shipments, and “simply diverting funds away from groups the Taliban considers hostile and toward groups they favor.”
He informed the committee on April 19 that “since the Taliban took control, the US government has sought to continue supporting the Afghan people without reaping benefits for the Taliban regime.” However, it is evident from our research that the Taliban is using a number of strategies to redirect US assistance funds. However, it is unknown how much of the $8 billion in US funding the extreme Islamist administration has absorbed without cooperation from the State Department and USAID.
Since the Department of State, USAID, the UN, and other organizations are refusing to provide us with the fundamental data that we or any other oversight body would require to guarantee safe stewardship of government monies, he said, “We simply do not know.” The committee said in a letter on Tuesday that it is “not confident the Biden Administration can guarantee that funding will make it to its intended recipients and not the Taliban or other sources of terrorism.” The committee also urged officials to accede to Sopko’s previous and future requests.
The committee noted that “it is Congress’s authority alone to determine SIGAR’s jurisdiction and scope of mission” and that “as US taxpayer dollars continue to assist the people of Afghanistan, it is imperative SIGAR’s mission remain unobstructed.”
