U.S. State Dept. Accidentally Gave $293 Million to Taliban Since Disastrous Afghanistan Withdrawal: Report

A new report from the U.S. Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) has revealed that the U.S. State Department has likely given at least $293 million to the Taliban since President Joe Biden ordered the disastrous — and deadly — withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan in 2021.

[RELATED: Collins Probes U.S. National Security Heads Over Biden’s Failed Afghanistan Withdrawal, Terrorism, and Foreign Criminal Operations in Maine…]

“In total, State could not demonstrate compliance with its partner vetting requirements on awards that disbursed at least $293 million in Afghanistan. State officials acknowledged that not all bureaus complied with document retention requirements,” said the SIGAR report.

The reported figure doesn’t include the estimated $7 billion worth of military equipment, such as Humvees and Black Hawk helicopters, that the U.S. military left behind for Islamic extremists to claim.

Amid the hasty retreat from Afghanistan, 13 U.S. soldiers were killed, along with 170 Afghan civilians, when a suicide bomber detonated an explosive device at the gate entrance to Hamid Karzai International Airport.

Biden’s decision to hastily withdraw U.S. forces from Afghanistan has been widely panned by American military and foreign policy experts, with many questions centering on why the evacuation used an airport at the heart of Kabul rather than the more secure Bagram Airfield located 60 kilometers north of the capital city.

Biden was also criticized by many veterans of the Afghanistan War for failing to properly ensure that Afghan allies who assisted anti-Taliban efforts were evacuated and given legal asylum in the U.S.

As a result as their known status as U.S. translators or sympathizers, the abandoned Afghans became high priority targets for the Taliban death squads which roamed the streets of Kabul freely following the U.S. retreat.

Following the humiliating retreat from Afghanistan, the Taliban — an Islamic fundamentalist movement known for violently discriminating against non-Muslims, women, ethnic minorities, and homosexuals — assumed control of the country.

In addition to seizing billions of dollars’ worth of U.S. military assets, new report found that the organization also quickly moved to open more than 1,000 non-profit organizations. While the non-profits advertised themselves as promoting human rights and humanitarian causes in Afghanistan, they were largely front groups that allowed the Taliban to secure massive tranches of taxpayer dollars under the supervision of State Department officials.

SIGAR found that two of the five State Department bureaus, which were sending taxpayer money to Afghan non-profits in 2022, failed to properly vet the non-profits receiving the taxpayer money.

In total, SIGAR was unable to vet the recipients of at least $293 million, meaning those dollars may have been embezzled by unknown actors or transferred directly to the Taliban or Taliban-aligned groups.

SIGAR found that the bureaus which failed to properly vet recipients were the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor (DRL) and the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (INL).

The report concludes that these poorly vetted money transfers have massively increased the risk of Taliban-sympathetic, anti-American terrorists acquiring U.S. dollars originally harvested from American taxpayers.

“Because DRL and INL 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,” said the report.

Interestingly, SIGAR’s only recommendation for dealing with the situation is to ensure that the bureaus which failed to comply with the vetting process begin to comply.

It does not suggest that any disciplinary action should be taken against those who likely gave $293 million in taxpayer dollars to the Taliban, nor does it suggest that the U.S. should stop donating hundreds of millions of dollars to a failed state controlled by radical Islamists.

In other words, no government employee will lose their job for handing $293 million to violent anti-American extremists and the programs that facilitated that funding will continue with no policy changes.

The Afghanistan War, America’s longest foreign war, cost U.S. taxpayers an estimated $2.261 trillion. Over the two-decade long conflict, 2,448 U.S. military personnel died along with 3,846 U.S. military contractors.

It is estimated that more than 45,000 Afghan civilians died over the course of the war as a result of the military conflict.

Updated to correct the amount to $293 million.