Afghanistan is a failed state, run by religious fanatics and organized like an American mafia family. Like a mafia family, it has its hands in many businesses. Also like a mafia family, its control of a business is under the table, away from the prying eyes of international organizations.
The adage "follow the money" is not very helpful in Afghanistan. Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.) found this out when trying to confirm if any U.S. aid money to Afghan civilians was intercepted by the Taliban.
He was shocked at what he found.
“People don’t realize that we are sending billions and billions of dollars to Afghanistan — a country we have pulled out of — which is now being overseen by our enemies,” Burchett tells the New York Sun. “They steal our money and we just keep giving it to them.”
Burchett discovered the Taliban's shell game with U.S. aid with the help of a former Afghan-American Army officer known as "Legend." Legend went to Afghanistan to try to help Afghan citizens who assisted the U.S. military during the war out of the country. While there, he uncovered the Taliban's ruse.
More from the New York Sun:
The New York Sun first raised the curtain on the issue back in 2022, after images of stacks of $100 bills were posted on social media by the central bank of Afghanistan. The cash payments — estimated to total $40 million weekly — had been sent by the Biden administration to help the Afghan people gear up for the winter. Sources, including Legend, told the Sun that the cash had been diverted to Taliban coffers.
Now, after more than two years, a presidential handover, and billions of dollars in aid, the National Resistance Front for Afghanistan — a group opposed to the Taliban — says that the sum total of the covert payments is even higher.
“It’s been widely reported that the Biden administration was sending shipments of U.S. dollars to Kabul on a weekly basis,” the head of foreign relations for the National Resistance Front, Ali Nazary, tells the Sun. “But our intelligence unit has discovered the Taliban received an additional $446 million last year from the Biden administration under Operation Enduring Sentinel” — supposedly a counter-terror operation. The sum could not be independently verified by the Sun.
We know that "Enduring Sentinel" was the Biden aid plan that was only supposed to go to NGOs to help promote stability in Afghanistan and the region. Projects such as national disease surveillance, rural water sanitation and hygiene were funded via non-governmental groups.
The problem was that many of those groups existed only on paper. According to Nazaray, the money went right into the Taliban's pockets.
Mr. Nazary’s findings appear to line up with a report published in May 2024 by the American agency that oversees American aid to Afghanistan, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction. The agency surveyed 144 nongovernmental organizations and public international organizations in Afghanistan that receive and administer American aid. Of the 65 that responded, 58 percent — or 38 in total — reported paying taxes, fees, duties, or utilities to the Taliban-controlled government.
Mr. Nazary says that the National Resistance Front campaigned to end the flow of aid throughout the Biden administration, but its efforts were disregarded. “The Biden administration just allowed Afghanistan to turn again into a haven for jihadism and terrorism,” Mr. Nazary tells the Sun. “And now we’re seeing that these groups are infiltrating Europe and the United States.”
The Taliban deny they are getting any money from the U.S.
Hamdullah Fitrat, the deputy Taliban spokesperson, claims that “In reality, the United States has not provided a single penny to the Islamic Emirate,” Fitrat said. “Instead, it has confiscated and frozen billions of dollars that rightfully belong to the people of Afghanistan.”
The Taliban's statements strain credulity, not just about U.S. cash going into their pockets, but about their treatment of women on International Women's Day.
Afghan women constitute an integral part of society as our mothers, sisters, daughters, and life partners.
— Zabihullah (..ذبـــــیح الله م ) (@Zabehulah_M33) March 8, 2025
The Islamic Emirate assumes full responsibility for the provision and safeguarding of the rights enshrined for them under Islamic Sharia law.
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Since women have no recognizable rights under Sharia law, the statement couldn't be more devoid of meaning.
Giving these murderers and oppressors any money at all is a betrayal of the Afghan people and the Americans who died trying to give them freedom.
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