A new watchdog report reveals that the country of Afghanistan has received a staggering $11 billion in foreign aid from the United States since the country’s collapse in August of 2021.
As Breitbart reports, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), John Sopko, issued his report on Monday. Sopko says that the U.S. and its allies have been sending “cash shipments” of about $80 million to Afghanistan “every 10-14 days” since the Taliban took over the country shortly before the withdrawal of all American forces.
Sopko said that the United Nations has assured him that all of the money has been “placed in designated U.N. accounts in a private bank,” and is not being “deposited in the central bank or provided to the Taliban.” The U.N. Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) similarly claimed that all of the cash shipments are being “carefully monitored, audited, inspected, and vetted in accordance with U.N. financial rules and processes.”
Despite these claims, Sopko’s report noted that the Taliban has stolen foreign aid before, and has also been able to prevent the poorest elements of a foreign population from receiving aid that has been designated for them; some of the Taliban’s methods for stealing foreign aid include “siphoning cash from U.N. shipments, or collecting royalties, or charging fees on cash shipments.”
“The U.N., NGOs (non-governmental organizations), and other entities involved in aid efforts have paid administrative fees to various Taliban ministries, and these fees were recorded by the Taliban as inland revenue,” the SIGAR report continued.
The Biden Administration’s foreign aid decisions, particularly with regards to the Middle East, have come under greater scrutiny in recent weeks following the decision to give Iran $6 billion in exchange for the release of five American hostages; the subsequent mass terrorist attacks against Israel led many to speculate that Iran could have used some of that money to fund the attacks.