White House blocking watchdog count of $8B US sent to Afghanistan that wound up in Taliban hands

WASHINGTON – After sending Afghanistan $8 billion since the chaotic 2021 US withdrawal from Kabul, the Biden administration is obstructing an internal investigation into how much of that money may have ended up in the Taliban’s hands, the House Oversight Committee said in a Tuesday letter obtained by The Post.

The State Department and US Agency for International Development (USAID) have explicitly barred their employees from sitting for interviews with Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) John Sopko and, along with the Treasury, have failed to deliver multiple requests for documents, according to the letter.

“This lack of cooperation is unacceptable,” the committee said in its letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and USAID Administrator Samantha Power. “The administration will neither avoid SIGAR’s important oversight work nor flout accountability to the American people for its catastrophic failures in Afghanistan.“

Created by Congress in 2008 to audit US reconstruction projects and activities in the war-torn country, SIGAR aims to “promote efficiency and effectiveness” of such programs and “detect and prevent waste, fraud, and abuse,” according to the office’s website.

Nearly two years after the last American troops left Kabul, SIGAR continues to be a “critical partner in helping the committee assess issues related to security, humanitarian, economic and governance assistance to the Afghan people,” the lawmakers wrote.

“The administration’s refusal to cooperate with SIGAR has inhibited SIGAR’s ability to conduct independent, robust and meaningful oversight,” the committee wrote in its letter. “As US taxpayer dollars continue to assist the people of Afghanistan, it is imperative SIGAR’s mission remain unobstructed.”

The committee, which is investigating the disastrous pullout and its aftermath, sent the letter after Sopko told them last month the agencies’ uncooperative actions blocked his office’s ability “to protect US taxpayer dollars from benefiting the Taliban and other terrorist organizations.”

“Due to the refusal of State or USAID to fully cooperate with SIGAR, I cannot report to this Committee or the American people on the extent to which our government may be funding the Taliban and other nefarious groups with US taxpayer dollars,” he added.

Not only would the administration not comply with requests for information on US-sent aid, Sopko said, the State Department “shockingly” told his office “that it didn’t know” how much revenue the Taliban has collected from the United Nations, NGOs or other groups delivering international aid.

Despite the Biden administration’s lack of cooperation, Sopko testified that his office learned the Taliban has generated income by imposing customs charges on aid shipments, taxing NGOs and “simply diverting funds away from groups the Taliban considers hostile and toward groups they favor.”

“Since the Taliban takeover, the US government has sought to continue supporting the Afghan people without providing benefits for the Taliban regime,” he told the committee April 19. “However, it is clear from our work that the Taliban is using various methods to divert US aid dollars.”

But without compliance from the State Department and USAID, it is unclear how much of the $8 billion in US-provided funds the radical Islamist government has sopped up.

“We simply do not know since the Department of State, USAID, the UN and other agencies are refusing to give us basic information that we or any other oversight body would need to ensure safe stewardship of tax dollars,” he said.

The committee in its Tuesday letter urged officials to comply with Sopko’s prior and future requests, adding 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.”

“As US taxpayer dollars continue to assist the people of Afghanistan, it is imperative SIGAR’s mission remain unobstructed,” the committee wrote, adding that “it is Congress’s authority alone to determine SIGAR’s jurisdiction and scope of mission.”