The Taliban used force to defy international aid in Afghanistan on Thursday, and in response to a US watchdog report that said the authorities would “use freely all means, including force,” ensuring that aid would go where they wanted.
A 118-page report released a day ago by a US Special Inspector for the reconstruction of Afghanistan said the Taliban would use their regulatory power to determine which NGOs operate under which conditions.
The report said it had assured Taliban bloc and Redirect AIDS to benefit the Pashtun community more than the minority Hazara or Tajik groups, and refused to allow NGOs to operate unless they employ businesses, NGOs or individuals affiliated with the Taliban.
Until recently, the US was the largest donor to Afghanistan, providing Afghanistan with 43% of international humanitarian funding last year.
But President Donald Trump’s administration has stopped foreign aid to the state as the money was benefiting the Taliban, officials said.
Based on interviews with 90 current and former staff members, including the United Nations and the United States, the Watchdog Report found that employees of an Afghan NGO were killed for exposing a diversion of food aid to Taliban military training camps.
“The Taliban could manipulate the exchange rates and rig currency auctions for US dollars imported for commercial purposes,” the report said.
The Taliban added: “We may conspire with senior UN officials to demand a kickback from UN vendors.”
A 2023 US Institute of Peace Report found that the Taliban “pervade and influenced” the least managed assistance programs.
A spokesman for the Ministry of Economy, which oversees foreign and domestic NGOs, rejected the findings of the report, claiming that domestic and foreign humanitarian aid was provided directly by international organizations by foreign agencies, without intervention from Taliban agencies.
“We strive to establish facilities necessary for aid organizations to promote economic growth and reduce poverty,” said spokesman Abdul Rahman Habib, adding that “supporting transparent activities of national and foreign organizations and monitoring projects.”
Afghanistan’s UN mission told The Associated Press in a statement that the report highlighted a “very complicated operating environment” for providing assistance in Afghanistan, including attempts to interfere and limit authorities.
We also addressed allegations of “kickback” in the report.
“We take allegations of fraud and corruption by either UN officials or implementation partners very seriously and ensure that we will investigate these quickly,” the statement said.
“We encourage those who own evidence of assistance diversion, misuse, misconduct, fraud, fraud, or abuse, to immediately report such information through established, formal and confidential reporting channels and enable them to investigate this.”
Reduce women’s rights
USAID officials told WatchDog in 2023 that the Taliban had refused to register for women-led NGOs, prevented them from opening bank accounts, refused to approve women-focused projects, replaced women with men, and threatened to shut down organizations that were not complying with the policy.
That same year, the report was told that even two high-ranking women UN officials, the deputy UN women’s director general and the UN women’s director general, “must not make public sites visits without men, particularly husbands, fathers or siblings.”
The United Nations said last week that dozens of women Afghan staff members had received death threats. The threat comes against the backdrop of the strict restrictions imposed on women since the Taliban returned to power in 2021.
The Taliban denied that such threats have been made or that they could be made.
The Taliban banned Afghan women from working in domestic and foreign NGOs in December 2022, extending the ban to the United Nations six months later, and then threatened to shut down agencies and groups that still employ women.
Nevertheless, some women remain in key areas, such as healthcare and emergency humanitarian assistance, where aid agencies report large needs.
Aid agencies say more than half of Afghanistan’s population, about 23 million, need humanitarian assistance.
The crisis stems from decades of conflict, including two decades of US war with the Taliban and the institute of poverty and climate shocks.
