Veterans Outraged by US Money Given to Taliban Through UN

Frustration and outrage are growing among a group of prominent veterans following the release of a report detailing how U.S. currency is flowing into Taliban-controlled Afghanistan and supporting the regime that American soldiers have fought against for decades.

Late last month, a government organization monitoring the situation in Afghanistan released a report that found that since December 2021, the United Nations, along with many other organizations, had helped funnel some $3.8 billion in U.S. currency into the Taliban-run country.

Sometimes, the report says, that means the UN literally funnels American money into Afghanistan through shipping companies.

While the money is typically channeled to UN partners in Afghanistan, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) found that U.S. money flows have benefited the Taliban “both directly and indirectly.”

“The humanitarian aid that these deliveries provide indirectly benefits the Taliban by stabilizing and legitimizing them, as the funds allow the Taliban to focus on their priorities and policies rather than providing basic services to the Afghan people,” the SIGAR report explained.

SIGAR also found that “under the pretext of taxing income, the Taliban attacked and extorted money from some direct cash aid recipients.”

In a separate report published in May, SIGAR found that at least 38 organizations had paid “more than $10.9 million in U.S. taxpayer money to the Taliban-controlled government.”

SIGAR stressed that “US currency is difficult to trace” and that “the Taliban now have greater ability to circumvent controls on the international banking system that are designed to limit the Taliban’s ability to launder money and finance terrorism.”

In other words, while institutions like the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development have procedures in place to ensure that American dollars do not end up in the hands of organizations like the Taliban, there are ways to get around that restriction.

For many veterans, this discovery was a punch in the gut.

“This has to stop now. We are sending billions of dollars to the Taliban while failing to take care of our veterans who are struggling with daily physical and mental health issues,” Mark “Oz” Geist, founder of the Shadow Warriors Project, told The Post.

“This is not only a slap in the face to every soldier who served in the 20-year war against Afghanistan and the Taliban, but even more so to the 13 families who lost loved ones when they were killed at Abbey Gate,” he added.

Geist criticized the discovery, calling it “horrific and a disgrace to those who served and sacrificed so much.”

In August 2021, as the United States was winding down its operations in Afghanistan and withdrawing its troops, an ISIS-K terrorist detonated a suicide bomb, killing 13 American soldiers at the Abbey Gate of Hamid Karzai International Airport.

Shawn Ryan, a former Navy SEAL and CIA officer who hosts his own podcast, made a similar reference to Abbey Gate.

“As a veteran who served in Afghanistan during the Global War on Terror, I believe that U.S. funding of the Taliban is morally reprehensible and fundamentally contrary to our national security interests, particularly as we approach the third anniversary of the Abbey Gate attack,” Ryan said.

Scott Mann, a former Green Beret and veterans advocate dealing with PTSD, explained that many veterans have received “very credible information” from resistance fighters in Afghanistan that corroborates the SIGAR report.

“American funds — intended for humanitarian aid and counterterrorism in Afghanistan — are being used to operationalize, plan and prepare for terrorist operations directed against U.S. and home country interests,” he told The Post.

Chad Robichaux, a Marine who founded The Mighty Oaks Foundation and helped lead one of the largest private rescue operations in Afghanistan in 2021, sharply criticized the State Department.

“Once again, the U.S. State Department has failed to properly manage American taxpayer dollars. This time, $293 million has ended up in the hands of the Taliban terrorist regime, potentially funding future attacks on America,” he said.

“When will enough be enough and when will this administration be able to take responsibility for the security of our country and its citizens?” he added.

Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.) introduced a bill in June aimed at preventing the Taliban from profiting from American cash.

“The withdrawal from Afghanistan is one of the Biden administration’s greatest failures,” he told The Post. “This administration has also sent millions of taxpayer dollars to the Taliban since then. I introduced legislation to prevent this administration from sending these terrorists one more cent, but it’s ridiculous that I had to do it in the first place.”

In March 2023, House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul (R-Texas), who is overseeing a broad review of the troop withdrawal from Afghanistan, asked SIGAR to investigate U.S. funds in Afghanistan.

“The Biden administration must take immediate action to prevent U.S. taxpayer dollars from going to the Taliban. I am grateful to SIGAR for their ongoing work to provide oversight of U.S. funding to Afghanistan,” he said earlier in a statement.

However, restricting the flow of US currency to Taliban-controlled Afghanistan is not without potential pitfalls.

In a letter to McCaul last month, SIGAR suggested that Congress consider “whether the benefits that the supply of U.S. currency has provided to the Taliban regime outweigh the economic and humanitarian benefits
“shipment-related.”

Afghanistan is widely documented as facing an acute crisis of poverty and hunger in the wake of the U.S. withdrawal. An estimated 6.5 million children in Afghanistan are approaching crisis levels of hunger, according to the NGO Save The Children.

An estimated 15.8 million Afghans “will experience crisis and extraordinary levels of food insecurity” in 2024, according to the UN. An earlier UN estimate from 2022 predicted that 9 in 10 Afghans would live in poverty.

In its July report, SIGAR explained that Afghanistan was grappling with a liquidity crisis, which prompted the UN to introduce the US currency to the troubled country, and that the US dollar was its “primary source of liquidity.”

“Given the Afghan economy’s dependence on U.S. currency supplies, SIGAR determined that reducing or discontinuing supplies would result in a net negative impact on economic and humanitarian benefits,” the watchdog wrote.

Controversially, the Afghan Taliban are not on the State Department’s list of foreign terrorist organizations, although Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan is.

Several lawmakers, including Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), have previously filed a bill to designate the Taliban in Afghanistan as a terrorist organization, but those efforts have so far been unsuccessful.