The money the U.S. is sending to avert a humanitarian disaster in Afghanistan is also helping prop up the oppressive Taliban regime, and it’s gotten so bad that an inspector general says federal officials need to rethink whether the U.S. support programs are worth it.
Millions risk starvation and mass deaths were only averted last year through a large global outpouring of humanitarian assistance, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, known as SIGAR, said in a new report Thursday. Two-thirds of the country’s population is being sustained this winter by international aid.
But the tradeoff is that the money indirectly funds the radical Islamist Taliban regime’s widely condemned policies limiting the rights of women and girls, which includes banning them from schools past the sixth grade and restricting their movement outside of their homes.
“In sum, the Taliban have effectively sentenced half the population to house arrest. Once again, women are being erased from public spaces,” John F. Sopko, the inspector general, concluded.
The audit poses tricky questions to U.S. policymakers at a time when Afghanistan has faded from the headlines, but has become in many ways a more desperate situation than it was when President Biden ordered the final withdrawal of American troops in 2021.
“It is SIGAR’s judgment that the Taliban regime’s institutionalized abuse of women raises the important question for policymakers of whether the United States can continue providing aid to Afghanistan without benefiting or propping up the Taliban,” Mr. Sopko wrote.
The inspector general noted that Afghanistan has slumped to the bottom of world rankings on a host of dismal yardsticks in the year and a half since the messy pullout of U.S. forces ordered by President Biden in the summer of 2021.
It is the only country where women and girls are banned from attending secondary schools or universities. It has the highest rates of hunger in the world. And Gallup polling conducted last summer, a year after the U.S. withdrawal, said life is now worse for Afghans than it has been “at any point in during the past decade — or for anyone else on the planet.”
The Taliban’s new prohibition on women working at nongovernmental organizations has also struck at the nation’s ability to deliver health care, with some nonprofits suspending their operations altogether. The result is 280 facilities that have shuttered.
The inspector general has been chronicling Afghanistan for most of the U.S. war and now nearly 18 months since American troops were fully withdrawn. That includes the airlift that brought tens of thousands of Afghans out of Kabul, transferred through overseas sites then brought to military bases in the U.S. for final processing and release.
U.S. money still flows
American officials have halted the cash that had been propping up the prior government in Afghanistan. which collapsed in the face of a Taliban offensive in 2021. But there is still plenty of assistance money going into the country.
Mr. Sopko said some $8 billion has been made available since the August 2021 Taliban takeover, with $2 billion for humanitarian and development needs and the release of $3.5 billion in money from Afghanistan’s central bank that has been directed to redevelopment assistance. Another $2.7 billion has been allocated to the Defense Department’s airlift and housing effort for the evacuees.
The U.S. remains the single biggest donor to Afghanistan, yet the Taliban regime’s interference in international humanitarian efforts goes deep.
The State Department told the inspector general that Taliban officials have been pressuring relief workers to disclose “personal biographical details.” The Taliban has also begun charging annual fees for use of private cars, motorcycles or bicycles, though enforcement is sporadic.
USAID, the lead U.S. foreign aid agency, recently altered its policy on cooperation with the Taliban. Previously it had barred organizations receiving USAID money from entering into memorandums of understanding with the Taliban, reasoning that the Taliban wasn’t the legitimate government. Now, USAID-backed groups can sign memorandums but must get USAID approval first.
The Biden administration is trying to figure out how to deliver assistance it deems critical without propping up a government it deems oppressive.
State Department officials told the inspector general they have seen no indication that the Taliban is willing to consider a deal to relax its restrictions on girls’ schooling in exchange for more international assistance.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.