Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR)

🚨 SIGAR released its 68th Quarterly Report to Congress, analyzing the closeout process for discontinued U.S. assistance programs; international engagement, including the current U.S. position on Afghanistan; the decrease in the UN’s humanitarian response; and a final look at the status of funds for Afghanistan reconstruction.

This is SIGAR’s final quarterly report on the status of Afghanistan reconstruction. SIGAR will release a final forensic audit in the fall, per the agency’s authorizing legislation.

Read here:https://www.sigar.mil/Portals/147/Files/Reports/Quarterly-Reports/2025-07-30qr.pdf

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🚨 SIGAR released its 67th Quarterly Report to Congress, analyzing the recent U.S. decision to terminate most assistance programs to Afghanistan; ongoing threats from terrorist groups operating in Afghanistan, including ISIS-K and TTP; international engagement with Afghanistan; and the Taliban’s continued extreme interpretation of sharia law.

Read here:https://www.sigar.mil/Portals/147/Files/Reports/Quarterly-Reports/2025-04-30qr.pdf

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Three Years of Taliban Rule Culminate in Draconian “Morality Law”

The Taliban’s morality law expands on existing decrees to limit the human rights and fundamental freedoms of Afghans’ public and private lives, and grants broad authority to Taliban inspectors tasked with enforcing them. The law also formally revokes the few freedoms left to women and appears to directly reject recent enticements from the international community to advance engagement in return for respecting international human rights standards.

Many of the edicts issued in the past three years are similar to those enforced during their 1996–2001 reign, despite promises the Taliban made prior to their 2021 takeover suggesting a willingness to moderate their earlier policies.

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Afghanistan and Pakistan are the two remaining countries where polio is endemic, meaning wild poliovirus is native and regularly occurs. The Taliban’s public health minister, Noor Jalal Jalali, attended the Polio Independent Monitoring Board meeting in Geneva, Switzerland, July 15–19. Jalali met with WHO Director-General and discussed Afghanistan’s health situation. Some observers online criticized the WHO for engaging in discussions with Jalali given the Taliban’s oppressive restrictions on women that have severely impacted Afghanistan’s health sector, their obstacles to polio vaccination campaigns, and their killing of polio vaccinators. Jalali has no prior public health experience, but served as the Taliban’s minister of interior from 1996 to 2001.
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On September 16, the Taliban suspended polio vaccinations nationally without explanation. The Guardian newspaper (United Kingdom) cited an anonymous health official who said that the suspension was due to security concerns that vaccination campaigns might reveal Taliban leaders’ locations and concerns that female healthcare workers were involved in administering vaccines.
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Afghanistan’s economy remained weak last quarter, reflecting a decline in growth and international aid, but showed some signs of stabilization. The World Bank reported that since August 2023, “the economic free fall has halted, with clear signs of stabilization and some recovery.” It added that banking operations have partially resumed and more business and household welfare have shown improvements.
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The World Bank reported last quarter that Afghanistan’s trade deficit grew by 39% from January to August 2024, to $5.6 billion (28% of annual GDP), compared to $4.0 billion (23% of GDP) in the same period in 2023. As of September, Afghanistan’s exports fell to $920.5 million (a 14% decline compared to the same period in 2023). The World Bank attributed these changes to Pakistan’s trade policies with Afghanistan, which included higher tariffs on agricultural exports, a change to local coal, and the withdrawal of customs duty on fresh and dry fruit.
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The UN’s 2024 Humanitarian Response Plan was 37% funded as of October, with $1.1 billion raised of the $3.1 billion requested. The UN has failed to meet its funding targets for Afghanistan in each of the three years following the Taliban takeover in 2021. The funding deficit coincides with “one of the world’s largest and most complex humanitarian crises,” affecting the 23.7 million Afghans dependent on humanitarian aid to meet their basic needs, according to the UN.

In August, a consortium of NGOs warned that Afghanistan is at risk of “becoming a forgotten crisis” unless the international community commits to sustaining support and engagement.

The UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) said in August that “catastrophe has been narrowly averted in Afghanistan” due to continued humanitarian assistance, but that improvements are marginal, with some 12.4 million people experiencing acute food insecurity.
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State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration reported that 12,634 refugees from Afghanistan have been admitted to the United States through the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program in FY 2024, as of August 31. Another 28,941 Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) applicants have been resettled to the United States in FY 2024.

As of August 30, SIGAR submitted 294 applications for Priority 1 (P1) and Priority 2 (P2) referral. Three individuals have had their applications for resettlement accepted; 58 cases have been rejected; and 233 cases still in process. Afghans awaiting resettlement are currently located in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Iran, Iraq, Turkey, and a number of European countries.

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A UN sanctions monitoring team issued a report in July that Afghanistan “continues to be perceived as permissive of friendly territory by terrorist groups, which also aspire to project threats globally.” State Department said it “remains unclear whether the Taliban have the will and capability to fully eliminate terrorist safe havens or control the flow of foreign terrorist fighters in and through Afghanistan.”

That same report stated that al Qaeda members continue to benefit from freedom of movement throughout Afghanistan, even though “the Taliban have substantially constrained the activities” of the group. The report stated that affiliates have been traveling to al Qaeda’s various training camps and supporting reorganizational efforts, which are “indicative of the group’s longer-term intent.”

In January, UN sanctions monitoring team reported that al Qaeda maintains at least eight training camps, five madrasas, safe houses, and a weapons depository in the Panjshir Valley. Al Qaeda also provides Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) with Afghan fighters and training camps, which led the UN sanctions monitoring team to warn that, “greater collaboration among Al-Qaida affiliates and TTP could transform the latter into an ‘extra-regional threat.’”

Read more: https://www.sigar.mil/pdf/quarterlyreports/2024-10-30qr.pdf =45

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The Taliban’s edicts restricting women’s rights and autonomy have impacted women’s mental health. A Journal of Public Health study published in June 2024 assessing female students who were banned from pursuing education found that among 426 participants, 87.6% exhibited depression symptoms and 49.8% reported suicidal thoughts.
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UN Women predicts that by 2026, the impact of leaving 1.1 million girls out of school and 100,000 women out of university will correlate to a 45% increase in early childbearing and a 50% increase in maternal mortality.

On September 3, the UN Population Fund estimated that 20,000 women in Afghanistan give birth each month in “hard to reach” areas. Furthermore, the UN’s Children’s Fund reported that just over 67% of births in Afghanistan are attended by a health professional. According to World Health Organization (WHO), having a skilled health professional (nurse, midwife, doctor) attend a birth is a lifesaving intervention for women in developing countries.
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Last quarter, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) said that university enrollment has dropped by 53% since 2021. In the meantime, the Taliban ministry of higher education began reviewing the curricula for certain subjects, such as mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, and education. They aim to replace the time spent on these subjects with more religious content.

Since the ban on girls’ education, media outlets in Afghanistan have been broadcasting educational programs for girls above the sixth grade. However, the Taliban have now prohibited radio and television stations in Khost Province from doing so.

Read more here:https://www.sigar.mil/pdf/quarterlyreports/2024-10-30qr.pdf =44

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August 15 marked three years since the Taliban seized power in Afghanistan. In front of a crowd of 10,000 gathered at Bagram Airfield, deputy prime minister Maulvi Abdul Kabir boasted that the Taliban have “eliminated internal differences and expanded the scope of unity and cooperation in the country.” Just days later, the group issued a new 114-page decree containing 35 articles related to morality in Afghanistan. The edict regulates appearance, private conduct, social behavior, media and imagery, and religious observance.
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USIP also noted that conservative religious scholars in and out of Afghanistan have disagreed with the Taliban’s recent interpretations of Islamic law. In response to the criticism, the Taliban issued a statement on September 20, barring religious scholars from engaging in debate on controversial topics.
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Afghan women in and out of Afghanistan have been protesting the morality law, especially its ban on women’s voices, by posting videos of themselves singing online. In an interview with National Public Radio (NPR), Fatima Etimadi told the network, “Every day the Taliban seeks new ways to restrict women. They’re making women die while they’re alive.” The law relies on the assumption that women’s voices are alluring or immodest.
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SIGAR released its latest lessons learned report, Staffing the Mission: Lessons from the U.S. Reconstruction of Afghanistan:

https://www.sigar.mil/pdf/lessonslearned/SIGAR-25-05-LL.pdf

The report examines how U.S. officials were unable to overcome critical deficiencies in U.S. military and civilian personnel practices during two decades in Afghanistan. In our consultations and interviews, this problem was identified by almost every person who worked in Afghanistan as one of the most critical issues that confronted our efforts there. It included:

(1) a recurring inability to staff a demanding mission,
(2) rapid turnover of the staff they did find, and
(3) poor coordination between military and civilian organizations.

This report is the 13th lessons learned report issued by SIGAR.

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