Free Republic

Daniel Greenfield August 15, 2022 In June, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction’s office (SIGAR), dispatched letters to Secretary of State Blinken and Samantha Power complaining that the State Department and USAID were stonewalling its investigation of waste, corruption and terror cash. "Two SIGAR audits are also being hindered by a lack of cooperation from State and USAID. The first evaluates your agencies’ compliance with the laws and regulations prohibiting transfers of funds to members of the Taliban and the Haqqani Network," the letter to Power complained. The Haqqani Network, which is allied with Al Qaeda, gained control of...

The Biden administration has provided more than $2.35 billion in taxpayer dollars to Afghanistan since the Taliban retook control of the government in 2021 following a deadly U.S. evacuation. The United States remains Afghanistan’s top patron, even as lawmakers and federal oversight officials warn that these funds could be propping up the Taliban’s terrorist government. Updated spending figures were disclosed Tuesday in a report by the Special Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction (SIGAR), a federal watchdog that documents waste, fraud, and abuse related to U.S. expenditures in the war-torn country. Around $1.7 billion "remained available for possible disbursement" at the...

Remember the heartbreaking stories, as shameless Joe Biden inexplicably withdrew all remaining U.S. forces from Afghanistan in the worst and most embarrassing United States military departure from a foreign country since the fall of Saigon in 1975? Of course, you do.The last US military planes left Afghanistan on August 30, 2021. Following that flight, Taliban soldiers entered the airport and declared victory.As my colleague Streiff reported on September 3, 2021, “By any conceivable measure, the US evacuation was a disgrace.” Streiff added:We know that thousands of Afghans holding special immigration visas (SIV) were left behind. We know hundreds, if not...

(CNSNews.com) – The special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction told lawmakers on Wednesday that his office has issued 11 reports and 600 audits since its creation in 2008, but that despite “all of the reports we’ve done, no one in the government has been held accountable.” “I always joke that the only person who’s ever going to get fired over Afghanistan is probably going to be me,” John Sopko told the House Foreign Affairs subcommittee that deals with international development. “Nobody else,” he said. “Not the generals who came up [to the Hill] and spun and spun and spun, and...

The American command in Afghanistan has for the first time in six years classified detailed statistics about the Afghan security forces — everything from equipment and training to attrition.Gen. John Campbell, who is leading the NATO coalition's non-combat mission in Afghanistan, said he now considers all that sensitive operational information that could help the Taliban.Campbell said he decided to classify details about the Afghan forces because they could be used by insurgent fighters to threaten both Afghan and U.S. forces.Campbell revealed his concerns in a letter to John Sopko, the U.S. Special Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction, or SIGAR, who...

In the latest of many scandals involving U.S. aid for Afghan social issues, tens of millions of American taxpayer dollars have been wasted on programs to supposedly assist women in the Islamic country escape repression yet we have no idea if it’s made a difference because there’s no accountability or follow up. During a two-year period from 2011 to 2013 the U.S. blew $64.8 million on 652 projects, programs and initiatives to support Afghan women though details of how the money was spent and the effectiveness of the costly experiments aren’t available, according to a federal audit. The cash flowed...

Here is a crazy story involving the U.S. government’s $89.5 billion Afghanistan reconstruction effort; the United States Army refuses to suspend contracts with dozens of companies tied to al Qaeda and the Taliban out of fear that it could violate their “due process rights.” It doesn’t get more outrageous than this! American tax dollars are going to the Middle Eastern terrorists that are trying to kill them. The best part, of course, is that the U.S. government has known about this for years yet won’t terminate the deals. It’s pure insanity, to put it quite mildly. A conservative online newspaper...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Criticized for incompetence and mismanagement, the U.S. official assigned to combat corruption in the multibillion-dollar effort to rebuild Afghanistan on Tuesday announced the firing of two top deputies and pledged to focus on financial fraud and waste. The moves come a few months after key members of Congress urged President Barack Obama to dismiss Arnold Fields, the special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction. Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., who chairs the Senate contracting oversight subcommittee, and other senators have said that Fields' office has failed to aggressively oversee the $56 billion the U.S. has committed since 2002 to...