‘Unacceptable’: House Republicans Call Out Biden Administration for Stonewalling Afghanistan Probe

House Oversight Committee chairman James Comer sent a letter to several Biden administration officials on Tuesday informing them that the administration’s “lack of cooperation” with the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) is “unacceptable.” 

Comer said SIGAR has been a “critical partner in helping the Committee assess issues related to security, humanitarian, economic, and governance assistance to the Afghan people” as the House panel investigates the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan.

Inspector General John Sopko, head of SIGAR, testified before the committee last month that he could not say “the extent to which our government may be funding the Taliban and other nefarious groups with U.S. taxpayer dollars” because of the refusal of the State Department and USAID to “fully cooperate with SIGAR.”

Since the withdrawal in August 2021, the U.S. has “provided or otherwise made available” $8 billion to assist the Afghan people, including $2.2 billion for humanitarian and development efforts and $3.5 billion in Afghan Central Bank reserves transferred to the newly created Afghan Fund to stabilize Afghanistan’s economy, Comer writes.

“The Committee is not confident the Biden Administration can guarantee that funding will make it to its intended recipients and not the Taliban or other sources of terrorism,” the chairman said.

SIGAR has made the Committee aware of refusals to cooperate by the State Department, U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the Department of Defense, and the U.S. Department of Treasury.

“This lack of cooperation is unacceptable,” Comer wrote in the letter obtained by National Review. “The Administration will neither avoid SIGAR’s important oversight work nor flout accountability to the American people for its catastrophic failures in Afghanistan.”

Though the Biden administration has said that SIGAR no longer has oversight jurisdiction over humanitarian aid and development assistance, Comer argues this is a “radical departure from its own past practice.” SIGAR received information and assistance from the State Department and USAID for 12 years.

Under the National Defense Authorization Act of 2008, SIGAR is required to report quarterly on amounts used to “establish or reestablish a political or societal institution of Afghanistan,” and the amounts used to provide products or services to the people of Afghanistan.

“The Committee questions why the Biden Administration’s posture has changed towards SIGAR and if it is because SIGAR has voiced concerns about the Administration’s efficacy in Afghanistan to date,” Comer wrote.

Among requests that the Biden administration has delayed or ignored: a request from SIGAR for access to the Doha Peace Agreement materials, including implementing agreements and classified annexes, as well as a request for a meeting for Sopko to interview Special Representative for Afghanistan Thomas West.

The State Department has allegedly directed its employees not to participate in SIGAR interviews, according to an email given to the House panel. USAID has also refused to allow SIGAR to interview its employees, while the State Department has allegedly instructed a contractor not to participate in a SIGAR audit and has told USAID and Treasury to not oblige any requests for information about the Afghan fund.

And the Department of Defense’s refusal to respond to SIGAR’s inquiries last year caused “months of delays in responding to the Committee’s bipartisan request for SIGAR to report on why the Afghan Security Forces collapsed,” according to the letter.

“The Administration’s refusal to cooperate with SIGAR has inhibited SIGAR’s ability to conduct independent, robust, and meaningful oversight,” Comer wrote. “As U.S. taxpayer dollars continue to assist the people of Afghanistan, it is imperative SIGAR’s mission remain unobstructed. Congress has granted SIGAR authority to carry out this mission of providing whole-of- government oversight, and it is Congress’s authority alone to determine SIGAR’s jurisdiction and scope of mission.”

The Committee “urges the Administration to cooperate fully with SIGAR on any prior, ongoing, or future requests for information, audits, evaluations, oversight, interviews, or any other tool SIGAR deems necessary to complete its mission,” Comer concluded.

Thirteen U.S. service members died in a suicide bombing during the exit, and as many as 9,000 Americans were left in Afghanistan as the U.S. completed its withdrawal in August 2021, according to a Senate Foreign Relations Committee report released last February.

The world watched as Kabul fell and masses of people scrambled to leave, with Taliban fighters whipping and beating Afghans trying to enter the airport where the U.S. military was handling evacuations. U.S. intelligence agencies warned that the Afghan military and government were in danger of collapse just one month earlier, as Biden publicly assured Americans that the Taliban’s takeover was “not inevitable.”

When the House Armed Services Committee held a hearing on the withdrawal in September 2021, Milley acknowledged in his testimony that the U.S. was caught off-guard by the swift fall of the U.S.-backed Afghan government.

“We absolutely missed the rapid, eleven-day collapse of the Afghan military and the Afghan government,” he said.

In February, top Republicans on the House Oversight Committee sent letters to several Biden administration officials demanding answers about the botched withdrawal.