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WASHINGTON (AP) The watchdog for U.S. assistance to Afghanistan warned lawmakers Wednesday that American aid to the country could be diverted to the Taliban as heaccused the Biden administration of stonewallinghis efforts to investigate.

Watch the hearing in the player above.

"Unfortunately, as I sit here today I cannot assure this committee or the American taxpayer, we are not currently funding the Taliban," John Sopko, the Special Inspector for Afghanistan Reconstruction, testified to the House Oversight Committee. "Nor can I assure you that the Taliban are not diverting the money we are sending for the intended recipients, which are the poor Afghan people."

The stunning disclosure by Sopko comes as House Republicans areusing the power of their new majority to hold the Biden administration accountableover its handling of the chaotic U.S. withdrawal in August 2021.

It also comes a week after theWhite House publicly released a 12-page summaryof the results of the so-called "hotwash" of U.S. policies around the ending of the nation's longest war, taking little responsibility for its own actions and asserting that President Joe Biden was "severely constrained" by former President Donald Trump's decisions.

Republicans, who have called Biden's handling of Afghanistan a "catastrophe," and a "stunning failure of leadership," criticized the review and after-action reports conducted by the State Department and the Pentagon as partisan. The White House privately transmitted the reports to Congress last week but they remain highly classified and will not be released publicly.

Sopko initially started the job in 2012 to oversee U.S. spending in Afghanistan when there was a large American presence in the country. But since the withdrawal, the work of the IG has shifted to monitoring the more than $8 billion dedicated to Afghanistan. The lack of U.S. military presence in the country has made keeping track of the large sums of money flowing into the country nearly impossible, Sopko said.

READ MORE: UN food agency says $800 million urgently needed for Afghanistan

He testified Wednesday to Congress that work is more complicated by the fact that the State Department and U.S. Agency for International Development have not been cooperating with his probe since withdrawal and asked for lawmakers' help in getting access to the necessary documents and testimony.

"We cannot abide a situation in which agencies are allowed to pick and choose what information an IG gets, or who an IG can interview, or what an IG may report on," Sopko said in his opening testimony. "If permitted to continue, it will end SIGAR's work in Afghanistan but also Congress's access to independent and credible oversight of any administration."

Sopko, who previously served in oversight roles in the House and Senate, testified that he had never seen this level of "obfuscation and delay" from any of the other previous administrations.

Republicans were quick to join in Sopko's criticism of the administration. Even one Democrat on the committee, Rep. Kweisi Mfume, D-Md., said that he regretted the agencies' refusal to cooperate.

"I'm going to go on the record and urge all three of those agencies today to cooperate more so that we might not be in a position of hearing what we've heard today or in a position of frustration like I am right now," Mfume told Sopko during the hearing.

The White House on Wednesday called the hearing, led by Oversight Chairman James Comer, another example of House Republicans' "political stunts."

"You can expect they will continue to falsely claim that the Biden Administration has 'obstructed' oversight despite the fact that we have provided thousands of pages of documents, analyses, spreadsheets, and written responses to questions, as well as hundreds of briefings to bipartisan Members and staff and public congressional testimony by senior officials, all while consistently providing updates and information to numerous inspectors general," Ian Sams, a spokesperson for the White House counsel's office, said in a statement.

A spokesperson for USAID said Wednesday that the agency "has consistently provided SIGAR responses to hundreds of questions, as well as thousands of pages of responsive documents, analyses, and spreadsheets describing dozens of programs that were part of the U.S. government's reconstruction effort in Afghanistan."

A request for comment from the State Department was not immediately returned.

Since the withdrawal, SIGAR has released several reports, nearly all of them critical of both Biden and Trump's handling of how to remove U.S. troops from Afghanistan in its final months.

Over the past two years, Sopko said his staff has requested numerous documents and interviews with officials who were involved in the withdrawal but had been stonewalled. He said those requests involved information about the evacuation and resettlement of Afghan nationals as well as ongoing humanitarian aid and questions about whether that assistance might be transferred to the Taliban.

"It sounds like you're a Republican member of Congress because Republican members of Congress send letters over to the administration and we don't get answers either," Rep. Byron Donalds, R-Fla., told Sopko during his testimony.

Despite the so-called stonewalling, Sopko said that he and his agents have been able to compile interviews with around 800 current and former U.S. employees who were involved both in the war in Afghanistan and the withdrawal.

"I think we had more sources in Afghanistan than all the other IGs combined and the GAO. So we're still trying to get that information, but the best information, like actual contract data, and actually the names of people is best and it should by law come from State and AID," Sopko said.

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WATCH: During House hearing, watchdog warns U.S. money could be flowing to Taliban - PBS NewsHour

April 19 (Reuters) - U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres will convene envoys on Afghanistan from various countries next month to try to find a unified approach to dealing with the Taliban authorities, the United Nations said on Wednesday.

The closed-door meeting in Doha on May 1-2 will aim to "reinvigorate the international engagement around common objectives for a durable way forward on ... Afghanistan," U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric told reporters.

Earlier this month the Taliban began enforcing a ban on Afghan women working for the United Nations. In December, the Islamist militant group that resumed control of Afghanistan in 2021 stopped most female humanitarian aid employees from working.

The Taliban says it respects women's rights in accordance with its strict interpretation of Islamic law.

Since toppling the Western-backed government after U.S.-led forces withdrew following 20 years of war, the Taliban has also tightened controls over women's access to public life, including barring women from university and closing most girls' high schools.

Dujarric also sought to explain comments made by U.N. Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed about the planned Doha meeting.

"Out of that, we hope that we will find those baby steps to put us back on the pathway to recognition ... of the Taliban, a principled recognition - in other words, there are conditions," Mohammed told an event at Princeton University on Monday.

"That discussion has to happen ... There are some that believe this can never happen. There are others that say, well, it has to happen," said Mohammed. "The Taliban clearly want recognition and that's the leverage we have."

Dujarric said on Wednesday that the issue of recognition was "clearly in the hands of the member states" and that Mohammed was reaffirming the need for an internationally coordinated approach.

"She was not in any way implying that anyone else but member states have the authority for recognition," Dujarric said.

In December, the 193-member U.N. General Assembly approved postponing - for the second time - a decision on whether to recognize the Afghan Taliban administration by allowing them to send a United Nations ambassador to New York.

Reporting by Michelle Nichols

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Continued here:
UN chief to convene Afghanistan meeting in Doha in May - Reuters

At a hearing Wednesday, Republican House lawmakers focused on the final months of the War in Afghanistan that lead to a tumultuous and deadly evacuation in the summer of 2021, while Democrats aimed to blame former President Donald Trumps negotiations with the Taliban for the collapse of the countrys U.S.-backed government after 20 years of fighting.

Today, the Taliban flag flies over Kabul, House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer, R-Ky., said. This is Joe Bidens legacy.

Comer conceded no single hearing can tell two decades worth of decisions that could have been made differently across four presidencies, but laid the blame at Bidens feet for an chaotic evacuation that saw 170 Afghans and 13 U.S. service members killed by an ISIS suicide bomber.

Democrats took a more expansive view, criticizing the successive administrations who oversaw the United States longest war, but also zeroing in on Trumps withdrawal negotiations and arguing they handcuffed the Afghan government and Biden into a no-win situation.

Joe Biden was president during seven of the 238 months of the war, said Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., the ranking member on the Oversight Committee. Understanding what led to the collapse of Afghan government and security forces is vitally important, but it requires looking comprehensively at the dynamics of the massive decades-long military and nation building failure, not just the last few months of the war.

Raskin called Trumps decision to exclude the Afghan government from his negotiations with Taliban disastrous and his winding down of U.S. troop presence to just 2,500 military personnel by the end of his term a calculated move to force Bidens hand.

At the Wednesday hearing, inspectors general from the Defense Department, the State Department, the U.S. Agency for International Development and the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction testified and took questions for over two hours.

Robert Storch, the Defense Departments inspector general, called the war a strategic failure. Diana Shaw, the State Departments acting inspector general, testified the department simply was not fully prepared for the evacuation. SIGARs inspector general John Sopko that the effort to stabilize Afghanistan after two decades of war was the result of many decisions made over the course of four presidential administrations, from ignoring rapid corruption and the lack of a consistent U.S. strategy to the inability to develop self-sustaining Afghan military forces and institutions.

The seeds of August 2021s drama were sewn many years before, Sopko continued, noting the 2020 negotiations with the Taliban dubbed the Doha Agreement and the subsequent decision to go through with the withdrawal in 2021, merely exacerbated long-existing problems.

Sopko said both the negotiated withdrawal and Bidens decision to follow through dramatically degraded the morale of the Afghan security forces, who relied heavily on U.S. support to keep the Taliban at bay.

In their ownafter-action reportreleased earlier this month, the Biden administration blamed former Afghan President Ashraf Ghani and the Afghan military for the collapse of the western-backed government during and after the U.S. evacuation.

No agency predicted a Taliban takeover in nine days, Kirby said when the report was sent to Congress. No agency predicted the rapid fleeing of President Ghani, who had indicated to us his intent to remain in Afghanistan up until he departed on the 15th of August. And no agency predicted that the more than 300,000 trained and equipped Afghan national security and defense forces would fail to fight for the country. Especially after 20 years of American support.

ButSIGAR reported in Februarythat the Afghan military felt abandoned and noted a decrease in U.S. airstrikes left them without a key advantage in their fight against the Taliban, who began capturing provincial capitals in early August 2021 in anticipation of the U.S. withdrawal.

Raskin asked Sopko Wednesday if the Doha Agreement emboldened the Taliban to increase their attacks on the Afghan military.

Yes, it did. It did. And if you talk to the Afghan generals and the people who are on the ground, which we did, theyll tell you that is exactly what happened, Sopko said.

Sopko also said then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo threatened to cut funding to the Afghan government if they didnt agree to release 5,000 Taliban prisoners, a move Kabul initially opposed.

Another central focus of the hearing was the flow of international aid into the country that is ending up in the pockets of the Taliban instead of being distributed to the Afghan people.

The United States has appropriated $2 billion for Afghanistan assistance since the withdrawal, and a further $3.5 billion may be available through this newly created Switzerland-based Afghan fund, Sopko said. Unfortunately, as I sit here today, I cannot assure this committee or the American taxpayer we are not currently funding the Taliban.

Nor can I assure you that the Taliban are not diverting the money we are sending from the intended recipients, which are the poor Afghan people, Sopko added.

Sopko also said the State Department and USAID are not cooperating with SIGAR as they seek to assess the flow of U.S. and international aid into the country, though he made clear to differentiate between the inspectors general and the agencies they watchdog over.

I havent seen a starving Taliban fighter on TV. They all seem to be fat, dumb and happy, Sopko said. I see a lot of starving Afghan children on TV. So, Im wondering, where is all this funding going?

As the hearing unfolded, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre contradicted Sopko and said the administration was supplying thousands of pages of documents and consistent updates to inspectors general.

Nicole Angarella, the acting deputy inspector general for USAID, which currently does not have an inspector general, laid out three actions she believes the agency should take to prevent fraud and corruption: stricter oversight, clearly defined performance objectives, and strengthening existing policies to combat graft and funds ending up in the hands of groups like the Taliban.

Regardless of role and party affiliation, all those who participated in the hearing were in agreement on one thing: the war that began when most of the last 13 U.S. service members to die in Afghanistanwere toddlers or infantsended in disaster.

The Afghan war cost the lives of more than 2,400 American service members, 3846 private contractors, more than 1100 allied service members, more than 66,000 National Afghan military and police and 47,245 Afghan civilians, without even getting into the Taliban side, Raskin said.

The Democrats summary of casualties may be an undercount. A2021 analysisby Brown University found the U.S. spent $2.3 trillion on a war directly resulting in 243,000 deaths across Afghanistan and Pakistan, including over 70,000 civilians.

But the researchers wrote, deaths caused by disease, loss of access to food, water, infrastructure, and/or other indirect consequences of the war did not count towards the nearly quarter million dead.

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GOP, Dems trade blame, seek answers over Afghanistan withdrawal - Spectrum News NY1

The Afghanistan Socio-Economic Outlook 2023, released by the UN Development Programme (UNDP), provides an overview of the fallout resulting from the takeover of Afghanistan by its present-day de facto rulers, the Taliban, in August 2021.

Immediately after the Taliban assumed power, the Afghan economy collapsed, accelerating Afghanistans decade-long slide into poverty; with a population estimated by the UN at about 40 million and GDP of $14.3 billion in 2021, Afghanistan is among the countries with the lowest per capita income in the world, with around 85 per cent of the population estimated to be living below the poverty line.

Displaced children livingi in Khoshi District in Afghanistan receive hygeine kits.

Whilst the report points to some encouraging signs (a rise in exports, an expected eight percent increase in domestic fiscal revenue, stabilization of the exchange rate, and a reduction in inflation), it explains that this is largely down to the large-scale international aid funding ($3.7 billion in 2022, $3.2 billion of which was provided by the UN) sent to Afghanistan in 2022.

This does not point to a lasting recovery: income per person is expected to decline this year and in 2024: UNDP modelling suggests that, if aid drops by 30 per cent, inflation could reach 10 percent in 2024, and average incomes could fall by 40 per cent.

Any reduction in international aid will worsen the economic prospects of Afghanistan, and extreme poverty will perpetuate for decades: the UN aid appeal of $4.6 billion for international assistance in 2023 is therefore the minimum required to help Afghans in need.

Surayo Buzurukova, the UNDP Deputy Resident Representative in Afghanistan, told UN News that the Talibans decision to highly restrict womens ability to study and work is an important reason for the economic woes of the country.

We have run simulations to see how the removal of women from the workforce will affect the economy going forward, said Ms. Buzurukova. We calculated that it will not be possible to achieve growth and reduce poverty without women. Thats the message we try to deliver when we speak to the de facto authorities.

Ms. Buzurukova remains hopeful that the situation will, eventually become less oppressive for women, particularly in the provinces, where the support of women aid workers is in high demand.

After August 2021, it was difficult to work here, and it took time to be able to engage with the Taliban and ensure that they listened to me. But now I have created a network of trust with senior members of the de facto authorities, at the provincial as well as the national level; its very important that they understand the importance of women to the economy.

We continue to deliver services across the country, through our NGO partners, and we have exemptions for the health and education sector, where women can continue to work but, of course the ban is a challenge and staff morale is affected.

A child is vaccinated against polio during a polio mobillisation campaign in Kandahar, Afghanistan.

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Afghanistan: UN predicts restrictions on women's rights will worsen ... - UN News

The possibility of a dignified life for women and girls has been kicked back to the dark ages in modern Afghanistan. Although the Taliban is not uniformly extreme in all parts of the country there are no signs of things getting materially better. Will international trade with countries like China, Russia and Iran be able to bring Afghanistan back to the 21st century?

The Talibans takeover of Kabul in August 2021 came as a surprise to many, although the group had made significant gains across the country once it was clear that all US troops would leave. Now, Afghanistan is facing one of the worlds worst humanitarian crises. The Afghan economy has been destroyed, and the US has frozen all of Afghanistans assets. Western aid has been suspended because the Taliban government includes designated terrorists, breaches promises to observe human rights, and has ties to other terrorist groups.

The Taliban seem to lack the capacity to manage these monumental challenges, but there is no clear alternative to their rule and government offices are full of corruption.

Last month, a year after the Taliban banned Afghan girls from receiving secondary education and barred women from working in most sectors outside of health and education, another school year began in Afghanistan. It is the only country in the world where girls are prohibited from going to school beyond the primary level and women are barred from traveling more than 70 kilometres without a close male relative.

Since the Talibans takeover, the group has sought to marginalize women and girls and erase them from virtually every aspect of public life. After a March 2022 ban on high school education, the Taliban also barred women from attending university and working in NGOs.

However, in some cities such as Balkh, Herat, and Faryab, girls can still attend school, university, and work.

The Taliban are grouped into three factions: the Kandahari, in the south; the Haqqani, who are said to be supported by Islamic State In Pakistan and are considered the worst and most extreme; and the Dari, who rule in the north of Afghanistan and are more open about men and women working together to improve society.

These three groups have different ideas and priorities, which has caused some infighting, especially regarding womens participation at school and university. About 60% of Taliban militants are illiterate.

When the Taliban took control of Afghanistan, they announced that they would forgive anyone who had worked with the USA/NATO or the previous governments special army. However, they broke their promises and killed many of them. Some were able to leave Afghanistan, but most could not due to financial difficulties. Western countries promised to help them, but have since forgotten about them, putting their lives in danger. Now there arent any jobs and 75% of people are living in poverty.

Maybe hope for the Afghan people will come from China, whose latest efforts at international diplomacy and mediation has resulted in a long hoped-for rapprochement between Iran and Saudi Arabia. China is also looking at investments such as the potential $50 billion worth of copper in the Mes Aynak mines. Russia and Iran are also candidates for investment which should improve the economic situation.

Otherwise the future looks bleak if the three factions do not find common ground on which to develop the country for the benefit of all Afghans.

Excerpt from:
What is currently happening in Afghanistan? - PRESSENZA International News Agency