The Left is livid. Witness the protests and sympathetic media stories about United States Agency for International Development staff and grantees prompted by President Donald Trump’s funding freeze. But USAID has also funded terrorist-tied organizations, and the agency’s own inspector general previously expressed concerns about its operations’ weak vetting and vulnerability to “armed groups.”
Two recently released reports present damaging details. The Middle East Forum highlighted problems with 12 nongovernmental organizations working globally, while NGO Monitor focused on two U.S.-registered nongovernmental organizations’ working in Gaza.
The MEF’s “multi-year study of USAID and State Department spending” found “$164 million of approved grants to radical organizations, with at least $122 million going to groups aligned with designated terrorists and their supporters. Billions more of federal monies has been given to leading American aid charities” that don’t “vet their terror-tied local partners.” The MEF concluded “the U.S. government [is] one of the leading financiers of global Islamism.”
“I cannot stress enough how wildly untrustworthy federal spending records are,” said Sam Westrop, the director of the Middle East Forum’s Islamist Watch program and author of the MEF’s report. Westrop suspects funding amounts are actually greater, in part because some grants are “publicly attributed to ‘miscellaneous’ grantees,” which could include named grantees. The MEF found that over about 20 years, all federal departments and agencies reporting such data gave “some $230 million [in named grants] … to organizations MEF has explicitly identified as radical.”
On Feb. 26, Middle East Forum executive director Gregg Roman told Congress that the U.S. has sent “$2.1 billion in American taxpayers’ money to Gaza since Oct. 7.” Roman further testified that “90% of aid that was going from the United States, by way of its agents in Gaza, ended up in Hamas controlled areas.”
So, let’s consider some of the organizations USAID has worked with in Gaza. First, there’s the Bayader Association for Environment and Development. USAID has authorized $901,253 in subgrants to Bayader since 2016, with the most recent allocation coming “six days before” Oct. 7, 2023, according to the MEF. Listed expenditures included Envision Gaza 2020; a water, sanitation, and hygiene project; and a COVID-19-related project. However, Westrop echoed “the point made by prominent litigators and judges such as Elena Kagan, that the exact details of the grant are irrelevant: when you help terrorists build homes, you’re helping terrorists build bombs.”
The MEF found that Bayader hosted “senior Hamas officials” in Gaza for a February 2023 event it ran with “Western Islamist charity Islamic Relief,” where “Bayader staff embraced senior Hamas officials, including … the son of the late Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, one of the men responsible for the October 7 pogrom.” Bayader’s 2021 annual report described “‘coordination’ and ‘meetings’ with Hamas’s Ministry of Interior, Ministry of Works, Ministry of Social Affairs and Ministry of Agriculture.” Bayader’s financial director posted on social media, mourning “the death of Palestinian Islamic Jihad’s Ahmed Abu Deka,” who was “deputy commander of the Al-Quds Brigades’ rocket forces.” And Bayader “advertises in Hamas media, where it boasts of its USAID funding.”
Next, there’s the American Near East Refugee Agency. “USAID is one of ANERA’s biggest contributors,” according to the MEF, which found that USAID authorized $102,189,558.27 in grants between 2007 and 2024, while the State Department authorized $6,972,879.18, for a total of $109,162,437.45.
NGO Monitor reported that ANERA works closely with Gaza’s Ministry of Social Development. It found that between 2013 and 2022, USAID “provided $79.2 million” for an “infrastructure development program.” More recently, USAID “earmarked to ANERA $12.5 million for 2024-2029 medical assistance,” while the State Department “is providing $209,099 … for a 2024-2025 project” with a redacted description.
Yona Schiffmiller, the director of research at NGO Monitor, explained the “Ministry of Social Development’s Hamas connections were significant and discussed publicly, including by the Palestinian Authority. Both government funders and NGO partners should have been aware and acted accordingly.”
The MEF dubbed ANERA “a long-standing partner of Hamas terror charity” Bayader and the Unlimited Friends Association, which the MEF previously “determined to be a Hamas proxy organization.”
The MEF’s report noted that the UFA “hosts events to provide financial support to ‘the families of martyrs and prisoners’” and openly collaborates with Hamas. In August 2022, USAID announced “a ‘USAID-funded Unlimited Friends Association educational and community center in Gaza’” built by ANERA. In spite of that, Westrop said, the UFA “does not appear in federal spending records.”
USAID has also authorized “at least $7 million,” and possibly as much as $30 million, for Mercy-USA. How that money was spent remains unclear, though. “Without the federal government publishing documentation around these grants and programs, we do not have a detailed account of these recipients’ activities other than single sentence grant program descriptions,” Westrop explained.
Mercy-USA is “a charitable franchise with a long history of suspected terror connections” and “a major partner of UNRWA,” according to the MEF. “One previous director … was … an Al Qaeda fundraiser who was jailed in 2004.” More recently, “Mercy-USA and its staff remain closely involved with the Muslim American Society, the leading voice of the Muslim Brotherhood in the United States.”
NGO Monitor further found that “transparency has decreased,” even as U.S. funding to Gaza increased after Oct. 7. Government data showed the State Department and USAID “allocated or provided approximately $200 million to ‘miscellaneous foreign awardees’ operating in the West Bank and Gaza” last year.
If the Trump administration slashes USAID funding, Faran Jeffery, deputy director of the UK-based counterextremism think tank Islamic Theology of Counter Terrorism, told me, “a number of extremist groups throughout Asia [would] face [a] financial crunch” in the coming months as their funds run dry. Schiffmiller observed, “Reform of foreign aid requires improved transparency and partner vetting to ensure that taxpayer funds are not diverted by terrorist groups, or provided to organizations that glorify violence … or harm U.S. interests.”
STATE DEPARTMENT CONSIDERING CRIMINAL REFERRALS AGAINST USAID
The MEF’s report recommended USAID “publicly disclose all applicants for public funds, solicit public” feedback, and post uncensored funding records. Finally, Ryan Mauro, an investigative researcher for Extremist Groups & Foreign Threats at the Capital Research Center, suggested the administration “form a committee of [outside experts] to review grant-giving and other areas of government where extremists have been partnered with,” as a check on the government.
It’s clearly time for a rethink. Humanitarian aid could be a powerful instrument of soft power used in concert with the State Department’s diplomacy. That would mean delivering food and medical aid globally without also subsidizing terrorist-tied organizations.
Melissa Langsam Braunstein (@slowhoneybee) is an independent writer in metropolitan Washington.
