Washington: The overseer of US aid to Afghanistan warned lawmakers on Wednesday that funding for the nation could be misdirected to the Taliban and charged the Biden administration with obstructing his investigation.
John Sopko, the Special Inspector for Afghanistan Reconstruction, testified before the House Oversight Committee, saying, "Unfortunately, as I sit here today, I cannot assure this committee or the American taxpayer, we are not currently funding the Taliban." "I also cannot guarantee that the Taliban are not stealing the funds we are sending to the underprivileged Afghan people, who are their intended beneficiaries."
As House Republicans use their newfound majority to hold the Biden administration accountable for how it handled the chaotic US withdrawal in August 2021, Sopko made the startling revelation.
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The White House took little responsibility for its own actions and claimed that President Joe Biden was "severely constrained" by former President Donald Trump's decisions in a 12-page summary of the outcomes of the so-called "hotwash" of US policies surrounding the end of the country's longest war that was made public a week earlier.
Republicans have criticised the review and after-action reports produced by the State Department and the Pentagon as being partisan and have called Biden's management of Afghanistan a "catastrophe" and a "stunning failure of leadership." The reports were privately sent by the White House to Congress last week, but they are still very highly classified and won't be made available to the public.
In 2012, when there was a significant American presence in Afghanistan, Sopko initially took on the position to oversee US spending there. However, since the withdrawal, the IG's duties have changed to include keeping track of the more than $8 billion allocated to Afghanistan.
According to Sopko, it is nearly impossible to keep track of the large amounts of money coming into the country because the US military is not present there.
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The State Department and the US Agency for International Development have not been cooperating with his investigation since their withdrawal, he testified to Congress on Wednesday, and he asked for assistance from lawmakers in gaining access to the necessary documents and testimony.
In his opening statement, Sopko said, "We cannot tolerate a situation where agencies are permitted to pick and choose what information an IG gets, who an IG can interview, or what an IG may report on." If allowed to go on, it will not only stop SIGAR's work in Afghanistan but also Congress's ability to conduct trustworthy, impartial oversight of any administration.
Sopko, who had previously held oversight positions in the House and Senate, claimed in court that no other previous administration had ever engaged in this level of "obfuscation and delay."
Republican commentators jumped on Sopko's attack on the administration. Rep. Kweisi Mfume, D-Md., one of the committee's Democrats, expressed regret over the agencies' lack of cooperation.
Mfume told Sopko during the hearing, "I'm going to go on the record and urge all three of those agencies to cooperate more today so that we might not be in a position to hear what we've heard today or in a position of frustration like I am right now.
The hearing, presided over by Oversight Chairman James Comer, was dubbed a "political stunt" by the White House on Wednesday.
The Biden Administration has provided thousands of pages of documents, analyses, spreadsheets, written responses to inquiries, hundreds of briefings to bipartisan Members and staff, public congressional testimony by senior officials, as well as regular updates and information to numerous inspectors general, according to Ian Sams, a spokeswoman. "You can expect they will continue to falsely claim that the Biden Administration has 'obstructed' oversight," Sams said.
According to a spokesperson for USAID, the organisation "has consistently provided SIGAR responses to hundreds of questions, as well as thousands of pages of responsive documents, analyses, and spreadsheets describing dozens of programmes that were part of the US government's reconstruction effort in Afghanistan."
The State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Since the withdrawal, SIGAR has published a number of reports, almost all of which are critical of how Biden and Trump handled the US troop withdrawal from Afghanistan in the final months of the war.
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Sopko claimed that over the past two years, his staff has repeatedly asked for documents and interviews with officials involved in the withdrawal but has always been met with resistance. In addition to inquiries about ongoing humanitarian aid and the possibility that it might be given to the Taliban, he claimed that these requests also included details about the evacuation and resettlement of Afghan nationals.
Rep. Byron Donalds, R-Fla., remarked to Sopko during his testimony, "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."
Sopko claimed that despite the alleged stonewalling, he and his agents were able to gather interviews from about 800 current and former US workers who were involved in both the war in Afghanistan and the withdrawal.
"I believe we had more sources in Afghanistan than the GAO and all the other IGs put together. We're still working to obtain that information, but the best data—like actual contract information and actual names of people—should, by law, come from State and AID, according to Sopko.