Tag: taliban

Biden Admin Quietly Spent $15 Mil To Distribute ‘Contraceptives and Condoms’ in Afghanistan—and Said Doing So Would Take ‘Some Coordination’ With Taliban

The Biden administration quietly awarded $15 million in taxpayer funds to Taliban-controlled Afghanistan to help distribute “oral contraceptives and condoms,” a non-public congressional funding notice reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon shows. In doing so, the administration acknowledged that “some coordination” with the Taliban would be “necessary for programmatic purposes.”

The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) earmarked the cash infusion, which has not been previously reported, last July. It transmitted the funds to Afghanistan in August, according to the funding notice and congressional sources familiar with the matter.

The $15 million USAID and its partner groups spent to “procure contraceptives,” including “oral contraceptives and condoms” in the Middle Eastern nation was part of a $100 million package meant to support “basic rights and freedoms” and empower “women and girls” living under Taliban rule. The terrorist organization, the USAID funding notice states, does not allow “young women and girls” to go to school or work in most professional fields.

It was the Biden administration’s chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan three years prior that led to those restrictions. The Taliban took over Kabul even before the final U.S. military planes left the city, and they quickly banned girls from school beyond sixth grade, making Afghanistan the only country in the world with such restrictions.

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Marco Rubio Exposes Biden Regime’s Cover-Up: Taliban Holds More American Hostages Than Reported — Calls for Massive Bounties on Their Leadership

Newly confirmed U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio raised alarms about the actual number of American hostages held by the Taliban—figures far greater than previously reported.

This disclosure, coming just days after the Secretary’s appointment, points to a disturbing possibility: Biden’s administration knew about the higher hostage counts but chose to hide this critical information from the public.

Marco Rubio, voicing his concerns on X, highlighted the dire situation: “Just hearing the Taliban is holding more American hostages than has been reported. If this is true, we need to immediately place a VERY BIG bounty on their top leaders, maybe even bigger than the one we had on Bin Laden.”

Rubio’s did not specify the exact number of Americans still captive.

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Taliban Defies Trump: Will Keep $7 Billion in Military Gear Left in Afghanistan by Joe Biden During Bungled Withdrawal

As The Gateway Pundit previously reported – Joe Biden supplied the Taliban terrorist organization and their Islamist accomplices with billions of dollars worth of US weapons, armed vehicles, helicopters, ammunition, and piles of cash after Biden bungled his withdrawal from the country.

Rather than destroying the equipment before leaving the country, Joe Biden surrendered billions of dollars worth of US military equipment to the Taliban.

In fact, Joe Biden left 300 times more guns than those passed to the Mexican cartels in Obama’s Fast and Furious program.

The Taliban later released video of the weapons Joe Biden left behind and a room full of stacks of $100 bills Joe left for good measure.

The Taliban posted videos of pallets of weapons and stacks of $100 bills they had seized.

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Two of Five State Bureaus Under Biden-Harris Regime Fail to Confirm Adherence to Vetting Requirements — Raising Concerns Over $293 Million Potentially Profiting Taliban

A recent audit report from the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) has exposed the Biden-Harris administration’s alarming failure to comply with counterterrorism vetting requirements for significant funds allocated to Afghanistan.

The audit, covering the period from March 2022 to November 2022, found that two out of five State Department bureaus failed to retain necessary documentation to demonstrate compliance with partner vetting requirements.

This lapse raises serious concerns that extremist groups, including the Taliban, may have profited from $293 million in U.S. taxpayer funds.

The Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor (DRL) and the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (INL) were unable to provide sufficient documentation for their programs in Afghanistan.

This failure means that SIGAR could not confirm whether these bureaus complied with State’s partner vetting policies, risking that funds could be misused or fall into the hands of terrorist-affiliated organizations.

This oversight comes at a time when the Taliban is reportedly establishing close ties with newly registered Afghan NGOs, raising fears that these entities could be funneling American aid directly into the hands of extremists.

Since the Taliban’s takeover in August 2021, there have been alarming reports of their efforts to secure U.S. funds intended for humanitarian assistance. SIGAR highlighted that over 1,000 new national NGOs have registered under the Taliban’s Ministry of Economy, many of which are suspected to be fraud and have links to terrorist activities.

The lack of rigorous vetting processes by the Biden administration’s State Department is not only a breach of protocol but also a potential betrayal of American taxpayers who expect their contributions to genuinely assist the Afghan people rather than bolster extremist factions.

The report indicates that while three other State Department bureaus— Political-Military Affairs, Office of Weapons Removal and Abatement (PM/WRA); Population, Refugees, and Migration (PRM); and South and Central Asian Affairs, Office of Press and Public Diplomacy (SCA/PPD)— managed to comply with vetting requirements, DRL and INL’s failures are particularly egregious given the substantial amounts of money involved.

Together, these two bureaus accounted for nearly $294 million in disbursements without adequate oversight or documentation, which might inadvertently benefit terrorist organizations.

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Afghan heroin shortage could lead to more overdose deaths – UN

The Taliban’s crackdown on poppy cultivation in Afghanistan  could trigger a spike in overdose deaths if the global heroin lack is filled by more potent synthetic compounds, the UN has warned.

A report released on Wednesday by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) assessed the impact of a ban on opium cultivation, production, processing and trade which the Taliban reintroduced in April 2022. It came too late to affect the harvest that year, but the crackdown caused output to shrink 95% in 2023, it said.

The loss of this supply from Afghanistan, previously the world’s dominant producer of opium and heroin, was partially compensated by Myanmar, where there was a 36% increase in output. Nevertheless, global opium production fell by 74% last year, according to UN research.

Prices of opiates in Afghanistan skyrocketed last year, but the availability of old stockpiles meant that no real shortage was reported in destination markets until early 2024, the report said.

Preliminary field observations indicate that this year the supply may slightly increase, but Afghanistan is unlikely to “reach the very high production observed in the years before 2023.” If the crunch continues, the purity of heroin on the global market may decline, and the demand for substitute opiates will surge, UNODC has predicted.

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Biden Has Delivered Millions in Taxpayer Money to … the TALIBAN!

A federal watchdog report reveals that after America had been at war with the Taliban for two decades, the Joe Biden administration now has delivered at least $11 million in U.S. taxpayer funds to the terrorists. Probably much more.

A Center Square report posted at Just the News explains much of the cash has been delivered through various aide groups that get federal tax dollars.

And, the report warns, “experts” suggest the actual total Biden has delivered to the Taliban could be much higher.

The Taliban, previously in control in Afghanistan, took control again within days of Biden’s abrupt decision to yank American troops out, a scheme that cost American lives and left behind tens of billions of dollars in American war machinery for the Taliban to use or sell.

Further, Biden left behind hundreds of Americans and thousands of Afghanis who had worked with the American presence there for years – all in danger of death at the hands of the Taliban.

The report cited the conclusion of SIGAR, a federal watchdog, which found, “The U.S. government has continued to be the largest international donor supporting the Afghan people since the former Afghan government collapsed and the Taliban returned to power in August 2021.”

The report continued, “Since then, the U.S. government has provided more than $2.8 billion in humanitarian and development assistance to help the people of Afghanistan.”

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Taliban weighs using U.S. mass surveillance plan, met with China’s Huawei

The Taliban are creating a large-scale camera surveillance network for Afghan cities that could involve repurposing a plan crafted by the Americans before their 2021 pullout, an interior ministry spokesman told Reuters, as authorities seek to supplement thousands of cameras already across the capital, Kabul.

The Taliban administration — which has publicly said it is focused on restoring security and clamping down on Islamic State, which has claimed many major attacks in Afghan cities — has also consulted with Chinese telecoms equipment maker Huawei about potential cooperation, the spokesman said.

Preventing attacks by international militant groups – including prominent organisations such as Islamic State – is at the heart of the interaction between the Taliban and many foreign nations, including the U.S. and China, according to readouts from those meetings. But some analysts question the cash-strapped regime’s ability to fund the program, and rights groups have expressed concern that any resources will be used to crackdown on protesters.

Details of how the Taliban intend to expand and manage mass surveillance, including obtaining the U.S. plan, have not been previously reported.

The mass camera rollout, which will involve a focus on “important points” in Kabul and elsewhere, is part of a new security strategy that will take four years to be fully implemented, Ministry of Interior spokesman Abdul Mateen Qani told Reuters.

“At the present we are working on a Kabul security map, which is (being completed) by security experts and (is taking) lots of time,” he said. “We already have two maps, one which was made by U.S.A for the previous government and second by Turkey.”

He did not detail when the Turkish plan was made.

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Taliban Releases Photos Of The U.S. Equipment They Seized From Biden’s Disastrous Pullout

Afghanistan’s extremist Taliban government released photographs late last week of some of the U.S. military equipment that it seized in the wake of President Joe Biden’s disastrous pullout from Afghanistan.

The photos come after Biden’s withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021 left up to a maximum of $24 billion worth of weapons and equipment in the hands of the Taliban.

“300 destroyed vehicles in the 205th Army Corps were restored,” Afghanistan’s Ministry of Defense wrote on Twitter. “As many as (300) types of intermediate military vehicles that were destroyed and unusable were restored and ready for use by the technical team of the Abu Dojaneh Brigade of the Badr Army.”

“Repaired vehicles include 150 International Kamaz trucks,” the statement continued. “125 Arada Humvee, 2 assault tanks, 4 Aradeh Taylor, 10 Aradeh Purcliff, and 15 are Humvee ambulances.”

“It should be mentioned that hundreds of other vehicles have been restored due to the efforts of the engineering and technical teams of the Ministry of National Defense,” the statement said.

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Biden paid Taliban more than $1 billion over last year

In the aftermath of Joe Biden’s report that he ordered a military drone strike that killed al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahiri in downtown Kabul, Afghanistan, a report has emerged that Biden has paid, over the last year, about $1 billion to the Taliban.

That would be the extremist Islamist organization that took over Afghanistan when Biden last year abruptly pulled American soldiers out.

Biden left behind hundreds of Americans, thousands of America-supporting nationals who likely would be targeted by assassination squads for their work, as well as some $80 billion in American war machinery.

Now a report from Foreign Desk News explains that Biden has been sending, and plans to send more, money to the Taliban.

A columnist also pointed out that it is unlikely that an al-Qaida operative could have set up shop and be working in Kabul without the Taliban knowing that.

The report said American foreign aid might be going to the “wrong places,” including Afghanistan.

“Annually, the U.S. allocates over $51 billion in economic aid and military assistance. $25 billion comes from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), while the Department of Defense and Department of State are close behind. Over 20 percent of this aid is divided among four countries: Israel, Jordan, Afghanistan, and Egypt. While well intentioned, corruption, failing infrastructure, or even cultural misunderstandings can mean that U.S. aid causes more harm than good,” the report explained.

Regarding the Taliban, the report explained, “The U.S. has pledged an additional $55 million in aid to Afghanistan. Over the past fiscal year, this totals to over $1 billion to humanitarian, economic, and military assistance aid to Afghanistan. Foreign aid always comes with criticism, but especially so when the recipient is an enemy of the U.S. and a corrupt, extremist and repressive regime.

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After Thousands of Soldiers Died Fighting Them In Afghanistan, The US Now Backs The Taliban

Yes, you read that headline correctly. As we approach the one year anniversary of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan it seems as though the United States government is once again playing musical chairs with whom it considers friend or foe. At least this appears to be the case due to a recent article published by AntiWar.com, in which a yet to be named spokesman for the US State Department asserted that the US “does not support organized violent opposition to the Taliban” rule in Afghanistan.

First reported by The Foreign Desk, the statement comes as resistance fighters claim victory over Taliban forces in the Baghlan Province as conflict in the region continues.

After a two day skirmish between Taliban fighters and Afghanistan’s National Resistance Front (NRF) which resulted in heavy Taliban losses and the NRF taking control of Baghlan province’s easternmost district of Khost wa Fereng, in northern Afghanistan, the resistance fighters took to social media to celebrate their victory.

Speaking to The Foreign Desk, the State Department spokesperson said ―

“We are monitoring the recent uptick in violence closely and call on all sides to exercise restraint and to engage. This is the only way that Afghanistan can confront its many challenges,”

Continuing on, emphasis our own,

“We want to see the emergence of stable and sustainable political dispensation via peaceful means. We do not support organized violent opposition to the Taliban, and we would discourage other powers from doing so as well,”

Although this position has not yet been publicly acknowledged outside of this interview with The Foreign Desk, as the piece from Anti War notes this is an awkward position for the administration to be in. Considering the last few decades spent vilifying the Taliban as the epitome of evil and the ultimate adversary.

Although also as noted, prior to the 2001 invasion the Bush administration was actually allied with the Taliban, considering them a partner in the war on drugs.

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