Global Courant 2023-04-20 04:28:14
WASHINGTON — The top inspector general for Afghanistan on Wednesday accused the Biden administration of blocking its attempts to obtain documents on aid to the country since the US military evacuation, warning that US tax dollars would likely end up in the hands of the Taliban.
“I cannot assure this committee or the American taxpayer that we are not currently funding the Taliban,” John Sopko, the Special Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction, or SIGAR, said at a House Oversight Committee hearing. “Nor can I assure you that the Taliban will not divert the money we send away from its intended recipients.”
He outlined ways in which Taliban fighters “siphoned” goods and funds entering Afghanistan, such as by diverting food aid and forcing groups to pay fees to operate in the country.
Mr Sopko blamed weak oversight practices within the international organizations that handle Afghan aid, and what he called the “abject refusal” of the State Department and US Agency for International Development to allow oversight.
“We inquired regularly,” Mr. Sopko said of his previous dealings with the State Department, USAID and the Pentagon, complaining about the lack of access to documents on what he said was more than $8 billion in US aid. had been provided to Afghanistan since the evacuation. “Since this government has been in place, it’s been radio silence.”
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The Biden administration backtracked on the allegations, effectively accusing the Inspector General of misrepresenting the extent to which the government has complied with his requests and of taking on a broader mandate than he was legally granted .
“Since SIGAR’s inception, USAID has consistently provided SIGAR answers to hundreds of questions, as well as thousands of pages of responsive documents, analyzes and spreadsheets describing dozens of programs that were part of the U.S. government’s reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan,” said Jessica Jennings. , a spokeswoman for USAID “We regularly and regularly work with SIGAR on their requests.”
A State Department spokesman said US reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan — the center of Mr Sopko’s jurisdiction — halted after the Taliban took over the government in August 2021.
The hearing had been heralded as a venue to scrutinize the Biden administration’s actions during the withdrawal, a focus the panel’s top Democrat Representative Jamie Raskin of Maryland criticized as “absurdly narrow-minded.”
Mr Sopko’s allegations nevertheless sparked rare bipartisan outrage among lawmakers.
“How is it that he is being blocked from doing what he has been legally charged with by this Congress – and previous Congresses?” said Florida Republican Representative Byron Donalds.
“This issue of insufficient accountability — I don’t know how any of us can defend that,” Maryland Democrat Representative Kweisi Mfume said.
Congress established the watchdog agency in 2008, and Mr. Sopko was appointed by President Barack Obama to head it in 2012. Since then, he has repeatedly clashed with the various federal government agencies involved in Afghanistan.
At Wednesday’s hearing, Mr. Sopko listed some recent highlights of that adversarial relationship. He complained that the Biden administration had rejected his requests for copies of documents related to the Doha Agreement, a deal the Trump administration made with the Taliban that set the terms for the US exit from Afghanistan.
He also charged that the State Department and USAID had refused to answer “the simplest oversight questions we have,” such as identifying the organizations that have received US aid for programs in Afghanistan since the US withdrawal. Ms Jennings called that claim “inaccurate”.
His complaints stood in stark contrast to the testimony of the inspectors general who oversees the State Department, Department of Defense and USAID, who appeared alongside Mr Sopko on Wednesday. Those officials told the commission they had no problems accessing information.
The testimony came as multiple Republican-led committees in the House examined the Biden administration’s withdrawal from Afghanistan, and as the party focuses on foreign aid programs to cut the federal budget.
The chairman of the Oversight Committee, James R. Comer, Republican of Kentucky, hinted that aid to Afghanistan was not sacrosanct either.
“The Biden administration takes money from the paychecks of American truck drivers, American teachers, American farmers, American construction workers and American soldiers and sends it to the same people who until not long ago shot at those soldiers, who killed those soldiers,” said Mr. Comer. “And the Biden administration has no interest in identifying the waste, fraud and abuse associated with Afghanistan.”
Mr Sopko, for his part, clarified that his complaint related to his ability to oversee the funds transferred to Afghanistan, not the aid itself.
“I am not against humanitarian aid,” Mr Sopko said. “If the goal is to help the Afghan people, we need to have effective oversight to make sure the money goes to those people.”
