Senior United Nations (UN) officials helped the Taliban extract kickbacks from UN contractors bankrolled by U.S. tax dollars, a new report from the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) alleged Wednesday.
UN officials allegedly worked with the Taliban to bribe and extort UN contractors supplying aid to Afghanistan in exchange for lucrative, often billion-dollar aid contracts, numerous anonymous sources told SIGAR in interviews. Of the $10.72 billion in total aid given to Afghanistan between 2021 and the State Department cancelling most of the funds in 2025, $3.83 billion came from the U.S.
The officials would not only make sure the Taliban got a cut of aid provided by the contracts, but also demanded bribes from the companies and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) involved to fast-track their contract’s approval.
Only around “30 to 40 percent” of the total aid given to Afghanistan actually reached the population for humanitarian purposes, according to the SIGAR report. The Taliban took control of Afghanistan after the U.S. withdrew in 2021 after two decades of war in which more than 2,300 Americans perished.
Click this link for the original source of this article.
Author: Faith Novak
This content is courtesy of, and owned and copyrighted by, https://www.offthepress.com and its author. This content is made available by use of the public RSS feed offered by the host site and is used for educational purposes only. If you are the author or represent the host site and would like this content removed now and in the future, please contact USSANews.com using the email address in the Contact page found in the website menu.
