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.
“Officially, the U.S. government and other donors maintain that none of their money is going to the Taliban,” the report reads. “In reality, a combination of funding pressures and public relations concerns encourage organizations to conceal how much of their aid winds up in places it was not intended to go.”
UN staffers would demand bribes from any company or NGO seeking a contract for aid, shooting down any bidder that refused to engage in the scheme, interviewees alleged to SIGAR. Moreover, the UN often pre-selected their clients, who were often privy to the scheme, before the bidding process even began.
Most of the corruption came from the World Food Programme (WFP), which was the single largest recipient of U.S. and worldwide funds to Afghanistan since the Fall of Kabul in 2021, anonymous interviewees told SIGAR.
The Taliban would use their influence to manipulate UN staffers to issue contracts to Taliban-backed companies and NGOs, fire employees from the rival Hazara ethnic group and infiltrate aid organizations with Taliban agents, according to SIGAR. The UN also paid the Taliban to run their security operations, but defended it as necessary to protect UN employees.
The terrorist organization would repeatedly divert aid for their own purposes, depriving the Hazara and other rival populations from humanitarian assistance, according to the SIGAR report.
“An NGO official explained to SIGAR ‘the Taliban, particularly the Haqqanis…use all the levers of state bureaucracy to prevent a company…[from operating] in the country’ if they refuse to add a Taliban vice president or other shareholder with major decision-making authority,” the report reads. “According to the official, these individuals are often the immediate relatives of Taliban officials and enjoy a share in the company’s profits without having to make any investment into the company.”
Notably, employees of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) participated in the Hamas attacks against Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, in which 1,200 people were killed and 240 people were taken hostage.
The UN did not respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
