Why can't America stop federal funding of jihadi groups like Jamaat-e-Islami
FirstpostThe West’s policies of countering Islamic extremism have been akin to feeding wolves to contain wolverine instincts. The House Foreign Affairs Committee chairman Michael McCaul sent a stinker to the US Agency for International Development — the independent federal government body responsible for massive amounts of foreign aid — over the agency’s “gross negligence” in failing to investigate credible allegations that a nonprofit linked to designated terrorist organisations received a $110,000 grant. A Foreign Affairs Committee press release said: “Chairman McCaul called on USAID administrator Samantha Power to immediately suspend the award to HHRD pending a full and thorough review of this grant, to include coordination with the intelligence community, federal law enforcement, the State Department Counterterrorism Bureau, and the Department of Homeland Security.” Falah-e-Insaniat Foundation, the charitable arm of Lashkar-e-Taiba which had carried out the 2008 Mumbai attacks, is known to sponsor HHRD events in Pakistan. In 2019, representatives Jim Banks, Chuck Fleischmann, and Randy Weber wrote to a State Department official requesting an investigation into “the nexus of charitable networks and terrorist groups” such as JI. In a 2019 House of Representatives resolution, Banks submitted: “Whereas various organisations in the United States that receive federal funds, such as the Islamic Circle of North America, share leadership and are openly affiliated with Jamaat-e-Islami.” Why does USAID, which the State Department oversees, continue such dubious funding despite red flags?