Key Points
- SNAP and other welfare programs are difficult to monitor for fraud.
- Terrorists take advantage of this and use the programs to launder money.
- They do it by using hawalas – networks of informal relationships.
The United States government has done a lot of good for the people of Afghanistan. Since 2002, Uncle Sam has provided $88 billion in security assistance; $36 billion in civilian aid; $780 million in support for Afghan women; and $4 billion in humanitarian assistance.
But now, the entire country is in crisis. And many are asking, what was it for?
We’re watching one of the worst foreign policy debacles in U.S. history unfold in Afghanistan. 13 U.S. servicemen and at least 170 Afghan citizens have been murdered. Multiple terrorist groups are jockeying for control of the country and the billions in military equipment we left behind.
It’s complete chaos in Kabul…and our welfare programs are inadvertently funding it.
A recent Government Accountability Institute (GAI) report found that millions of dollars in welfare benefits are laundered through SNAP-approved vendors who then wire it overseas to support terrorist groups like al Qaeda, the Taliban and ISIS.
According to GAI research, “the use of these public program funds to finance terror actually dates back as far as 1985, to the Achille Lauro cruise liner hijacking in which one American hostage was executed. The plotters of the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center and even the Boston Marathon bombers in 2013 both took advantage of such vulnerabilities.”
So, how do they do it? How are funds meant to assist the most vulnerable Americans being used to fund terrorist efforts home and abroad? It’s done via businesses called “hawalas.”
“Muslim immigrants in western countries frequently transfer money to family members in their home countries. They frequently use businesses known as “hawalas” to do this. Based on the Arabic word for transfer (or trust), hawalas are a deceptively simple, centuries-old method for transferring funds from one place to another,” GAI reports.
These businesses sometimes have nefarious ties to SNAP fraud, money laundering, and transferring funds to some of the biggest terrorist hotspots around the world.
Here’s one example of how this takes place, as described in the GAI report:
In 2012, Ali Ugas Mohamud of Arlington, Texas, was sentenced to more almost five years in prison after pleading guilty to an indictment charging him with multiple charges of food stamp fraud, wire fraud, and conducting an unlicensed money transmitting business. He was ordered to pay $1,418,027 in restitution.
Mohamud owned a grocery store and was authorized to accept SNAP funds. Beginning in 2009, Mohamud purchased food stamp benefits for cash and wired money to individuals in Somalia using government benefits. Additionally, he wired thousands of dollars from EBT management firm, Affiliated Computer Services, Inc., to his bank in Arlington.
SNAP supports more than 40 million Americans – but the program is so large, it’s difficult to effectively monitor for fraud. This makes it an easy target for terrorist networks.
Nearly $1.1 billion dollars in SNAP benefits were lost to food trafficking in 2014 alone.
Despite efforts from Congress, hawalas remain largely unregulated. There have been bills like the Combating Money Laundering, Terrorist Financing, and Counterfeiting Act that have had bipartisan support, but it’s still not enough.
“Federal departments including Treasury, Defense, and State, and agencies like the FBI and DHS all agree: terrorists and other transnational criminal networks use hawalas,” GAI reports. “Despite stronger regulations since 9/11, it remains easy to launder money this way, and difficult to trace.”
Congress appropriated more than $3 billion to the Afghanistan Security Forces Fund (ASFF) in 2021 and the President has requested over $3.3 billion for 2022. Billions in SNAP benefits are being illegally laundered to terrorist groups via hawalas.
So the U.S. is essentially funding wars against terror and the terrorists in turn.
Read the entire Government Accountability Institute report here: EBTerrorism: How Fraud-Riddled SNAP Funds Terrorism, Fails at Enforcement, Wastes Taxpayer Money.
