Iowa Republican Sen. Joni Ernst on Friday blasted the Biden administration for mistakenly sending at least $293 million to Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, according to a letter obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation.
According to the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), State Department bureaus did not properly vet recipients of $293 million in aid provided to Afghanistan in 2022, raising concerns that the Taliban may have been a beneficiary. Report “Since July,” Ernst told President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Friday. letter It called the mistakes “unacceptable” and demanded “immediate action be taken to rectify these issues.” (Related: Experts say Hamas' new leader will not turn the tide of Gaza war by releasing the names of terrorists behind October 7 attacks)
“Joe Biden and Kamala Harris gave the Taliban $293 million in cash after leaving behind billions of dollars of state-of-the-art military equipment during their disastrous Afghanistan withdrawal,” Ernst told DCNF. “The American people deserve better than the completely amateurish behavior happening in the White House and State Department, and I am demanding accountability.”
Three years after US troops left Afghanistan, the situation is as bad as it was before the warhttps://t.co/A1tvWnpuIx
— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) July 11, 2024
According to the letter, Ernst told Blinken and Biden that “this failure has increased the risk that terrorists or individuals or entities with ties to terrorists may illegally benefit from the Administration's expenditures in Afghanistan.” State Department officials previously acknowledged to SIGAR that relevant State Department departments had not complied with proper documentation and vetting requirements for certain recipients of assistance, resulting in $293 million in questionable assistance, according to a July SIGAR report.
Ernst invoice The bill, which will become law in 2023, would require the U.S. government to track and publicly disclose federal funds sent to Russian and Chinese entities. Her office told DCNF that she recently amended the bill to include other groups, such as the Taliban.
“The Biden-Harris Administration has put American blood, and now taxpayer money, into the hands of the Taliban. The Administration should sanction terrorist groups, not subsidize their activities. This lack of accountability and misuse of taxpayer dollars is completely unacceptable,” Ernst wrote to Biden and Blinken.
The Biden administration deliver In total, the United States has provided Afghanistan with $2.8 billion in humanitarian and development aid since the country withdrew from the country in 2021. There have been multiple reports that in some cases the aid has not been properly tracked or delivered, and that some of it may have been diverted to the Taliban and other extremist groups.
Three years after the withdrawal, Afghanistan has largely returned to the state it was in before the US's two decades of intervention. The Taliban now have control of the country, impose an authoritarian rule and are accused of numerous human rights violations, particularly against women.
Al Qaeda, the Islamic militant group behind the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in New York, has returned to Afghanistan with the Taliban's permission, despite Biden's insistence that this is not happening in 2023. There are no signs that U.S. troops will return to the region in the near future.
“The U.S. strategy for Afghanistan is zero,” former senior State Department official Gabriel Noronha previously told DCNF.
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