Congresswoman Jacobs Questions Secretary Blinken on Failure to Address Corruption in Afghanistan, Efforts to Boost Humanitarian Aid, and Improving Peace Building and Development in Future Operations
Sec. Blinken thanked Jacobs for work to get people out of Afghanistan in opening statement
San Diego, CA — Congresswoman Sara Jacobs (D-CA-53) participated in a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing today with Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken on the Afghanistan withdrawal. (Full hearing video here.) During the hearing, Congresswoman Jacobs questioned Secretary Blinken on U.S. failures to address corruption in Afghanistan, the need for the Treasury Department to issue an OFAC general license for humanitarian aid, and how the State Department can improve peace building and development efforts moving forward.
Earlier this month, Congresswoman Jacobs led a group of 32 lawmakers urging the Biden Administration to take specific steps to ensure that humanitarian aid can reach Afghans in need, including directing the Treasury Department to issue general licenses through the Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC) to enable non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to deliver desperately needed assistance in Afghanistan.
In his opening statement, Secretary Blinken acknowledged the efforts of Congresswoman Jacobs and her office in helping people leave Afghanistan and calling attention to issues related to the evacuation of American citizens, Afghan allies, and others.
Secretary Blinken stated:
"And I want to recognize efforts by Congress.
“To name a few examples: Congressman Fitzpatrick worked with the State Department to reunite an Afghan family in New Jersey. Congressman Keating worked with our folks on the ground to help a Voice of America reporter and his family get to the airport. Congresswoman Jacobs and Congressman Issa worked across party lines to draw attention to cases of Legal Permanent Residents and Afghans at risk. Please know that your emails and calls made a real difference in getting people out, and we continue to use your lists and your information in this next phase of our mission."
Written submitted testimony here, video here.
The transcript of Congresswoman Jacobs’ questions for Secretary Blinken is as follows (video here):
Congresswoman Jacobs: Thank you so much, Mr. Chair, and thank you, Mr. Secretary, for answering our questions, and for staying so that some of us more junior members get a chance to ask you questions as well. I first wanted to say that while I have been publicly critical of many of the decisions made around the evacuation — as a member of the Honoring Our Promises Working Group — as you know, I used to work at the State Department. I've talked to so many former colleagues and friends who were on the ground in Kabul, who were working tirelessly night and day, no sleep, for weeks on end trying to get people out. I think it's an incredible disservice to our diplomatic corps and to the brave people who work there every single day to say that they are not deserving of praise. I disagree with some of the decisions that were made, but the people doing the work around the clock deserve to be praised.
Secretary Blinken: Thank you.
Congresswoman Jacobs: Now, I want to raise a letter I sent with Senator Merkley and many of my colleagues. While I remain committed to working to get people out of Afghanistan with my colleagues, I also want to make sure that we are doing everything we can to deliver humanitarian assistance and, you know, urging the Treasury Department to issue an OFAC General License. So I look forward to working with you and the Administration to make sure that the 18 million Afghans that are in need are provided support. I think we heard just today from the UN how dire that need is.
I also think, you know, we talked a lot about policy failures, and the last few months and the last 20 years. And I know you're still observing the lessons of the past few decades, and I look forward to working with you on that, and lessons learned, especially as someone who has done a lot of work in international peace building and conflict stabilization.
I want to follow up on something you addressed with my colleague Mr. Phillips on a very specific failure we encountered over and over again in Afghanistan, and that's on corruption. Why was the State Department unable to address this issue over 20 years? And what can we do to make sure that as we work with other countries and promote good governance around the globe, that we are not continuing to have those same problems?
Secretary Blinken: Yeah, that is a great question, and one that I don't have a good answer to because it's manifestly a failure of our policy over the last 20 years and one that we need to address. Because ultimately, that corruption, I think, among other things, undermined any trust or confidence in the government as well as allegiance to the government. And so when you're asking, you know, Afghan security forces to fight for their country and to fight for a government when there's that much corruption that’s endemic, it’s awfully hard to get that allegiance.
So you're a hundred percent right to point to that problem. We're putting a special emphasis in the Department writ large on trying to more effectively combat corruption around the world. And I think we need to understand very much the lessons of Afghanistan as part of that effort. We certainly welcome working with you and others on that because we see this around the world as a source of profound instability.
Congresswoman Jacobs: I appreciate that. And I look forward to working with you on that and especially looking at how the way we do our assistance and security assistance feeds into the incentives around corruption. I know you've been busy, so I'm not sure if you've had a chance to read the recently released SIGAR Lessons Learned report. But I was wondering specifically what the Administration plans on applying going forward on how we're conducting peace building and development in all the countries we’re working in? Because I think what we saw in Afghanistan was obviously a failure of some of our military strategy, but also, that in 20 years we could not do the development and peace building programs that would have made the rest of the engagement more durable.
So, you know, how do we plan our foreign engagements going forward with realistic goals, space to course-correct, and how do we make sure we're actually peacebuilding and helping countries develop, and not just doing the same thing that we just saw didn't work in Afghanistan?
Secretary Blinken: Well, first, I hope that I can actually get my senior team in place to work on just that. But as we were talking about a little bit earlier, the most senior official is unfortunately stuck in the Senate right now. But we do need to — I've seen summaries of the report. I have not yet read the whole thing, but I've seen the summaries of it. This is going to be an important, very important document, in informing what we do going forward and how we do it better.
So again, this is something we welcome working with Congress on in the weeks ahead.
Congresswoman Jacobs: Well, thank you. Mr. Chair, I yield back.
###