U.S. and international financial aid to Afghanistan is helping strengthen the Taliban’s power, former Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction John F. Sopko revealed.
“The Taliban have cynically benefited from our desire to help,” Sopko said at the Herat Security Dialogue XII in Madrid, Spain, last week. “Our assistance has allowed the regime to prioritize funding their security and intelligence services to strengthen their stranglehold on power.”
In January, President Trump ordered a 90-day pause on all foreign aid to conduct a sweeping review. The goal is to ensure that projects funded with U.S. taxpayer money align with his “America First” policy.
Sopko hopes that the 90-day pause will directly re-evaluate the aid going to Afghanistan.
According to SIGAR reports, the Taliban have been diverting aid, imposing taxes, fees, and creating barriers that prevent Afghans from accessing essential services.
The U.S. and international community officially cut off direct financial support to Afghanistan after the hasty retreat and fall of the Afghanistan government in 2021. Despite this, the amount of U.S. cash aid still being sent to Afghanistan is significant.
“American cash comes in by the ton by airplane,” Sopko said, addressing media rumours that there was a weekly influx of U.S. money going to Afghanistan. “It’s an extensive amount of money being used by UN and humanitarian agencies to convert to Afghanis.”
The U.S. has allocated $21 billion in assistance to Afghanistan in three years, including $3.7 billion in humanitarian and development assistance.
Sopko believes this financial aid has allowed “the country to – once again – become a terrorist haven.
“The same humanitarian aid that feeds hungry people also supports a regime’s military and secret police.”
In SIGAR investigations, Sopko and his team have gathered information on the Taliban infiltrating UN groups in Afghanistan. There have been several reports published on corruption between UN agencies and the Taliban.
“The Taliban interfere in aid delivery at every stage in the process,” Sopko said. “The regime directs aid to its supporters and away from its enemies, extracts kickbacks from UN contractors, and infiltrates aid organizations, forcing them to censor reporting about diversion.
The speech at the Herat Security Dialogue XII was the first since Sopko’s ‘retirement’. In January, Sopko and 17 other Inspector Generals were dismissed by the Trump administration. Sopko had been Special Inspector General for Afghanistan for nearly 15 years, appointed by Barack Obama in 2012.
Sopko was initially invited to speak about how SIGAR planned to deal with the current situation. However, in the space of a couple of months, Sopko and 17 other Inspector Generals have been fired by the Trump administration, and SIGAR is now due to shut its offices within a year.
Sopko used his speech to be “brutally frank” – talking without restriction about the past, present, and future of Afghanistan.
“The future of Afghanistan depends on a careful assessment of whether the harm of rewarding the Taliban outweighs any potential benefits of assistance.”
Sopko pointed out that the current processing of humanitarian aid may be inadequate.
“Aid passes through long chains of UN agencies and international NGOs – with each taking a cut – before reaching needy Afghans,” He said. “A good percentage of the money disappears before it reaches them. While legal, this is also a diversion.”
Sopko believes that to tackle the growing problem, there must be a reduction in the number of ‘middlemen’ between donor and aid recipients.
“These middlemen – often confined to compounds in Kabul or headquarter offices in Washington, Rome, London and elsewhere – contribute little. However, their ‘cut’ pays their salaries, living expenses and overhead costs – and ensures the financial survival of their organisations.”
After his speech, Sopko held an informal chat on stage with Afghan media leader Sami Mahdi. The talk quickly turned to the U.S. retreat from Afghanistan in 2021 and areas of failure over 20 years.
In the 20 years of U.S. intervention in Afghanistan, corruption was a major problem in the country, widespread in the Afghan government and U.S. agencies.
“We had no strategy; the strategy from day one was to get out,” Sopko said.
“One of the things we saw more than corruption was horrible contracting, a box of broken tools. Contractors were given promotions even if their project didn’t work.” Sopko cited an example of a General serving in Afghanistan who had been given around $1 million to spend in less than a month. The General ended up digging holes and filling them back up again, just to use the money.
According to SIGAR analysis, the U.S. government defined success in Afghanistan by how much money was spent, not how the money was spent.
“It was stupidity. You had to lie to the US people. We deluded the American people.
“The way the US government does business is broken. The way the US government deals with countries like Afghanistan has to be fixed.”
At the end of his speech, Sopko called for action from the U.S. and international community.
“We must do better than constantly voicing just our righteous indignation in reaction to Taliban atrocities and violations of human rights. We must act forcefully and truly condition our assistance.”
