
<p>Taliban are seeing their heyday since Biden was put into the White House. Not only did the Biden administration hand Taliban the country’s control in less than a year after its inauguration but has since funded the extremist Islamists with well over $200 million seemingly in an error arising out of the State Department’s incompetence.</p>



<p>Last week, Judicial Watch posted about an audit report from the office of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) released earlier in July. According to the report, the State Department has disbursed nearly $240 million to organizations that benefitted the Taliban. The State Department was found to have failed to follow its own counterterrorism vetting requirements for organizations in Afghanistan before releasing the funds to them. The SIGAR report says:</p>



<p><em>In total, State could not demonstrate compliance with its partner vetting requirements on awards that disbursed at least $293 million in Afghanistan. State officials acknowledged that not all bureaus complied with document retention requirements.</em></p>



<p>Judicial Watch reminded that last year it had reported how Taliban had set up fake non-profits to steal millions of U.S. dollars in taxpayer money actually meant to benefit the vulnerable people in Afghanistan. The conservative organization wrote in November last year that Taliban were stealing US funds from non-profits supposedly working to educate the Afghan population:</p>



<p><em>Specifically, the Taliban is benefiting from American education funding through the establishment of fraudulent NGOs to receive donor assistance, according to an audit published recently by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR).</em></p>



<p>In April 2023, media reported on the testimony of the special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction, John Sopko, before the House Oversight Committee. Spoko told the lawmakers that the U.S. government provided billions in taxpayer money to Taliban and other terror groups in Afghanistan. He said:</p>



<p><em>“Unfortunately, as I sit here today, I cannot assure you we are not now funding the Taliban. Nor can I assure you the Taliban are not diverting it from the intended recipients, which are the Afghan people.”</em></p>



<p>It is worth noting that the U.S. State Department does not list Taliban in Afghanistan as a terrorist group but it does list the Pakistani Taliban as terrorists. This is the case despite the fact, as the Voice of America (VOA) explained in a 2017 article, that Afghan Taliban meet both criteria for being declared a terrorist organization by the State Department: engaging in terrorism and threatening the security of U.S. nationals or the national security of the United States. The article described the reason Taliban in Afghanistan are not on the U.S. terror list as:</p>



<p><em>“…a concern that applying the terror label to the group would restrict U.S. and Afghan government diplomatic contacts with the Taliban, making peace talks more difficult.”</em></p>



<p>More recently, the Biden administration attracted attention by announcing a plea deal to spare three terrorists behind the 9/11 attacks the death penalty. The news broke on Thursday (August 01) that the three terrorists – Khalid Shaikh Mohammad, Walid Muhammad Salih Mubarak Bin &#8216;Attash, and Mustafa Ahmed Adam al Hawsawi – would be spared the death penalty. A fierce and instant backlash, mainly from conservatives, followed the news and slammed the Biden administration for going soft on terror. The next day, Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin announced that he had revoked the plea deal and the official in charge of the commission that signed off on the deal had been fired.</p>

Biden Administration Sends Taliban $239 Million in Error
