The Taliban Have ‘Infiltrated’ U.N. Deliveries of Aid

The United Nations is the custodian of billions of dollars of international assistance meant for the hungry and needy of Afghanistan, where around half the population is said to depend on outside help just to stay alive. Yet the agencies entrusted with delivering that aid have been “effectively infiltrated” by the terrorist-run Taliban, who regard foreign charity as just another revenue stream, according to a report prepared for the U.S. government that has not yet been made public.

Tapping into charities and international aid to siphon money is nothing terribly new for the Taliban, who have been doing so since their first rise to power in Afghanistan in the mid-1990s. But that approach has taken on extra significance since the Taliban takeover of the country in August 2021, when terrorists, drug traffickers, and illegal traders were catapulted to power. The result has been fewer opportunities for Taliban leaders, and rank-and-file fighters, to cash in on illicit activity, making the collection plate grab all the more vital.

The detailed, and devastating, analysis of Afghanistan’s political and economic situation two years after the fall of Kabul was commissioned by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the U.S. government arm for foreign aid, and obtained by Foreign Policy. The report confirms that aid is being systematically diverted through Taliban-controlled hands and raises serious questions about the presence in Afghanistan of U.N. agencies charged with delivering that aid to those who need it. 

The “Taliban appear to view the UN system as yet another revenue stream, one which their movement will seek to monopolize and centralize control over,” the report says.

The report casts doubt on the world body’s ability to control the flow of aid, including about $2 billion from the United States alone since Aug. 15, 2021, when the Islamic Republic collapsed. And it comes as concern is growing that Western governments, including the Biden administration, favor moving toward recognizing the Taliban as the legitimate authority in Afghanistan, rather than attempting to hold them to account for brutal policies that have trampled the Afghan people and again transformed the country into a haven for global terrorism. 

With at least 19 agencies present in Afghanistan, the U.N. has effectively been operating illegally since a December edict from the Taliban banned the employment of women in NGOs; nondiscrimination is fundamental to the U.N. Charter. The USAID report says many nongovernmental organizations are now paying women to stay home, while the Taliban have ordered them to send their male relatives to ostensibly work in their place, even as the displaced women continue to do the heavy lifting. Afghanistan represents the biggest single-country appeal, for $3.2 billion this year (down from an earlier $4.6 billion), though the U.N. complains that, amid reports of corruption and complicity, it has received less than a quarter of the money. The United States is the biggest financial supporter of the U.N.

Donor reluctance to stump up the cash is understandable, given the contents of the report, which was submitted to USAID in May by the U.S. Institute of Peace. It flies in the face of claims that the Taliban are no longer the unreconstructed and unaccountable group that ran Afghanistan into the ground between 1996 and 2001. Assertions from U.N. and government officials that rifts within the Taliban could be exploited to force a reversal on policies such as confining women to their homes and banning girls from secondary education are also debunked; the report concludes that “the Taliban remain strongly, surprisingly cohesive.” Just as the political center of gravity has shifted south from Kabul to Kandahar, the decision-making power has drifted more into the orbit of Supreme Leader Haibatullah Akhundzada—there is little meaningful opposition.

The playbook of Taliban interference with foreign aid includes intimidation and coercion of local U.N. staff and, as with other NGOs, pushing for “ever-increasing degrees of credit and control over the delivery of aid, especially the more tangible forms of aid,” the report says. NGOs are forced to sign memoranda of understanding with ministries that are being taken over by agents of the Taliban’s secret service, the General Directorate of Intelligence (GDI). The GDI official responsible for oversight of NGOs is believed to be responsible for a massacre of opponents in Nangarhar, according to the report. 

The Taliban recipe for overcoming opposition, like the Romans and British before them, has been to divide and conquer, and it still pays dividends—in an aid-flooded Afghanistan, handsome ones. The report notes that U.N. agencies and NGOs lack collective bargaining power as they enter bilateral agreements complying with conditions for Taliban oversight and control. This “removed much of the leverage other agencies had once the precedent of acquiescence was set,” the report says. 

The report also sheds some light on Taliban finances, describing the group as adept at tax collection and basic budget management—some iffy diversions by the supreme leader aside—thanks in part to the retention of a large core of Republic-era civil servants. Despite the collapse of Afghanistan’s economy, Taliban revenues of about $2 billion a year are roughly what the old government managed. What’s less clear is where that money goes. The report estimates that about 40 percent of the national budget is allocated to the security sector, as former military commanders, who retain control over “men with guns,” are a critical constituency. The rest is rather more opaque.

The “Taliban are clearly generating income—but it isn’t at all clear what they are spending it on,” the report says. 

In the meantime, as much as the Taliban remain reluctant to actually become a competent governing body, they are happy to be seen as such. That is one reason why NGOs that deliver high-profile goods and services such as health care are much more likely to be tolerated by the Taliban than civil society groups that deliver things that either smack of Western influence or can’t be packed in the back of a truck. The problem with the Taliban’s control of money is that it insulates them from any of the innumerable, and so far futile, calls to lessen their oppression of women or add some inclusivity to their government or fully rehabilitate former political opponents.

“The myriad means of profiting from engagement with the UN system and the aid sector, aside from formal taxation, mean that even though the investment amounts are greatly reduced from the 20 years of U.S.-led intervention, foreign aid is a major economic prize to be contested,” the report says.