Afghanistan Watchdog Says American Taxpayers’ Money Could be Flowing to Taliban

The Biden Administration says that it cannot determine whether millions of dollars in aid to Afghanistan are ending up under the control of the Taliban, according to a recent audit.An audit of two State Department bureaus, the Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor bureau and the International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs bureau found that they “could not demonstrate their compliance with partner vetting requirements because they were unable to provide supporting documentation for many of their respective awards.”The New York Sun previously reported that the commander of the National Resistance Front of Afghanistan, Ahmad Massoud, said humanitarian aid to Afghanistan, which supplies everything from vital food for the population to educational resources, is “a lifeline” for the Taliban government.The investigator who performed the audit, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, said in a report Wednesday that “Collectively, State could not demonstrate their compliance with its partner vetting requirements on awards that disbursed at least $293 million in Afghanistan.”The determinations were part of a larger audit of five State Department bureaus. Three of them were found to be in compliance.The report did not say definitively whether aid to Afghanistan was ending up in the hands of the Taliban, though since the Taliban takeover of the country it’s plausible that American aid could end up in their hands.“Because two State bureaus could not demonstrate their compliance with State’s partner vetting requirements, there is an increased risk that terrorist and terrorist-affiliated individuals and entities may have illegally benefited from State spending in Afghanistan,” the report reads.Since the American withdrawal from Afghanistan some $2.3 billion in aid has gone to the country. The report noted that, without proper documentation, some of that aid could be funneled towards Taliban controlled organizations.“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 State complying with its own vetting and document retention requirements,” the report reads.The report recommended that the bureaus change the way that they change how they retain documents in relation to vetting done for aid partners, something that the State Department says it agreed to do.

Afghanistan Watchdog Says American Taxpayers’ Money Could be Flowing to Taliban

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