It looks like reporting in The New York Sun and other press outlets may have forced the United Nations to provide some transparency about cash deliveries to Afghanistan. That’s what we take from the fact that a spokesman for the Taliban-controlled central bank, Hasib Noori, now says, in a statement last week, that the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan has ceased its cash deliveries to the Taliban-controlled country.

Now the question is whether Congress will step up. For months the country’s central bank, Da Afghanistan Bank, has been circulating on the internet pictures of pallets of cash arriving at the Kabul airport. The postings have raised questions as to the source of the cash. Some $1.8 billion has been delivered that way since December 2021, according to the UN. Dispersing American denomination to a country dominated by the Taliban is a recipe for disaster.  

“Not us,” the Treasury Department has insisted to our Benny Avni. The UN’s cash deliveries, however, come from its regular budget. Nearly a quarter of that budget is financed by the United States Congress with tax from American taxpayers. Once doled out in cash, the funds are essentially untraceable, and the funds can end up in the hands of the Taliban. Even Afghan private banks can easily be preyed-on by the armed men of the Taliban.

The Biden administration has clammed up tighter than a conch in a mudslide. So much so that the Special Inspector-general for Afghanistan Reconstruction was, for the first time in its history,  unable to “provide Congress and the American people with a full accounting of this US government spending.” That quote is from the Special Inspector General’s most recent report. Even so, it’s unclear whether the contretemps is hitting home.

The reports that the UN is suspending cash deliveries, for one thing, are unconfirmed. “Not that I’m aware,” Secretary General Guterres’ spokesman, Stephane Dujarric, told the Sun. Following the press scrutiny, however, the UN now feels the need to explain its aid-funding delivery methods. On Monday, the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan published a fact sheet on the matter.

The fact sheet says that it uses cash “due to the disruption to international banking transfers and liquidity issues since August 2021.” The cash deliveries are “placed in designated UN accounts in a private bank” for use by the various UN and associated aid groups, it wrote. None of it goes through the central bank. Yet, 70 percent of the UN humanitarian work in Afghanistan is done by local and international non governmental organizations.

The Norwegian Refugee Council and other NGOs have ceased operation since last month, when the Taliban banned women employment. The NRC “can only resume work when the ban on female colleagues is lifted,” its secretary general, Jan Egeland, tweeted. Mr. Egeland is at Kabul, pleading with the Taliban to end the ban.  If the Taliban’s harsh rules impede humanitarian work and force aid groups to cease operations, where does all the cash go? 

Continued cash deliveries will depend on “multiple factors,” according to the UNAMA fact sheet. Those include, but are not limited to the viability of the country’s banking system. Some other factors, we imagine, would include intense scrutiny by the press, the Special Inspector General, and, most importantly, Congress. Several members of the new, Republican-controlled House have already expressed interest.

The Sun is not opposed to aiding people in need, and oppressed Afghans surely fit the bill — arguably more so than most foreign aid recipients. Yet, American taxpayers are entitled to assurances that their hard earned money is not spent lining the pockets of Afghan thugs whose names top our terrorist lists. This is one of the most important stories of the Biden era, and this is not a matter on which Congress will want to be caught flat-footed: Follow the money.