KABUL, Afghanistan: About 91 percent of the $8 billion in humanitarian assistance allocated to Afghanistan between August 2021 and September 2026 cannot be traced, according to the Kabul Institute, amid allegations that the Taliban have obstructed aid distribution.
The Afghan-led research organisation, Kabul Institute, in a report, said the transfer of 91 percent of humanitarian aid to Afghanistan is unclear, with only about 9 percent of assistance traceable.
According to the institute, of the $8 billion in humanitarian aid allocated to Afghanistan, only $721.9 million can be traced. The institute said global humanitarian assistance to Afghanistan has fallen by 80 percent since 2021.
Our report and the Afghanistan Aid Tracker are live: of the $8 billion donors have confirmed paying into the humanitarian response in Afghanistan since 2021, only $721.9 million, 9 percent, can be traced past the first recipient, and no agency publishes programme-level spending in any machine-readable public source, which is why we built an Afghan-led record that draws only on data donors and agencies have already published. Link to the report in the first comment: @IamMaqsood @shoaib_alami @LMurtaza07 @attal_shams @OmSamad @kawusi @rimohib
— Kabul Institute (@kabulinstitute) October 22, 2026
Taliban’s Use of Coercion to Influence Aid Distribution
Monitoring organisations have previously raised concerns about the transparency of international aid and the possibility of its diversion in Afghanistan.
In a report published in August 2025, the US Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction accused the Taliban of using coercion and administrative powers to influence aid distribution, deny assistance to some minority communities and pressure humanitarian workers.
The Kabul Institute unveiled its Afghanistan Aid Tracker during an online event on Thursday, saying the platform is designed to help Afghans, journalists, researchers and donors track publicly available information on international humanitarian funding for the country.
https://t.co/2DVsrz6Tkv
— Kabul Institute (@kabulinstitute) October 22, 2026
The tracker also identified $1.42 billion across 316 payments in which recipients were recorded as confidential. Researchers said they found no program-level spending data published in a machine-readable public source that would allow the public to systematically track how funds were ultimately spent.
Naweed Kawusi, a senior fellow at the Kabul Institute, said the tracker was intended to give Afghans and others a publicly accessible record of humanitarian funding and allow users to follow individual donors, agencies and payments for as long as the public data permit.
The Kabul Institute said its tracker currently covers aid data from 2021 through 2026.
Afghanistan’s Hunger Crisis Expose Taliban’s Failures
Afghanistan’s worsening unemployment and poverty crisis is driving families into hunger and desperation under the Taliban regime.
The Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) has warned that nearly 16 million people in the country lack sufficient food, while one-third of the population could face hunger in the coming winter.
Despite Taliban claims of economic progress, residents across Afghanistan say the absence of employment opportunities and declining household incomes have made survival increasingly difficult.
Shopkeepers and small business owners are also reporting mounting losses as impoverished customers can no longer afford goods beyond basic necessities.
Citizens describe a worsening economic situation, accusing the Taliban regime of favouring their own members and associates in government recruitment while ordinary Afghans struggle to find work.
The economic hardship is also forcing families to consider sending children abroad through dangerous smuggling routes. A woman from Herat said she wanted to send her 16-year-old son to Iran because his father could not find work and the family was struggling with hunger.
She said many people who previously had jobs had also become unemployed as poverty deepened and employment opportunities dwindled.
Another Herat resident said she had been unable to bring even half a loaf of bread home for two days. She attributed her predicament to extreme poverty, physical weakness and the lack of work.
The crisis has also driven some families towards begging. A journalist in Herat said that he had seen women begging alongside their husbands on roadsides after repeated attempts to find employment failed.
In Ghor province, a resident described the struggle to feed his children amid unemployment and drought. “I cannot find even a piece of dry bread to give to my children,” he said, explaining that his family had abandoned various foods and was struggling to obtain even the most basic nourishment.
NRC chief Jan Egeland said in a post on X on Friday that nearly 16 million people in Afghanistan lacked access to sufficient food. He warned that at least two million more people had been added to the number facing inadequate food access this year.
