Some UN aid funds end up in Taliban-run central bank

This story was first published by ProPublica, a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom.

The United Nations has delivered more than $2.9 billion in cash to Afghanistan since the Taliban seized control, resulting in the flow of US funds to the extremist group, according to a recent government report.

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The UN deposits the cash into a private Afghan bank and disburses funds to the agency’s aid organizations and nonprofit humanitarian groups. But the money does not stop there, the report found. Some winds up at the central bank of Afghanistan, which is under the control of the Taliban. The group took over the country after the withdrawal of US forces in August 2021.

The report, from the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, provides the first detailed account of how US cash falls under the control of the Taliban and adds to a growing body of evidence that contributions to the UN are not always reaching Afghans in need. It did not specify how much US funding has been channeled to the central bank.

“Most of the money that’s going in cash through the UN is ultimately coming from U.S. taxpayers,” John Sopko, the inspector general, said in an interview. “It’s going to a terrorist group. The Taliban are a bunch of terrorists.”

UN officials do not deny that the cash delivered to Afghanistan makes its way to the central bank. But they say there is no avoiding it since the Taliban control the country.

In a briefing to the UN Security Council on March 6, Roza Otunbayeva, the UN’s special representative for Afghanistan, did not mention the Afghan central bank. The cash shipments, she said, have helped stabilize the