U.S. Taxpayers Spent $1 Billion to Fund Sharia in Afghanistan

Islamic-State-Statue-of-LibertyWould the situation really be worse than it is now if, instead of all this money spent on Sharia, the U.S. had stood up for its own values, and made it clear that money would only flow to those who stood for the freedom of speech, the freedom of conscience, and equality of rights of all people before the law?

“Watchdog: U.S. Taxpayers Funded Development of Sharia Law System in Afghanistan,” by Edwin Mora, Breitbart, July 8, 2015:

The U.S. government has spent more than $1 billion in American taxpayer funds on programs to develop the rule of law in Afghanistan, including efforts to improve a judicial system that incorporates Islamic Sharia law, reports a watchdog agency appointed by Congress.

According to the watchdog agency known as the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), the Departments of Defense (DOD), Justice (DOJ), State (State), and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) have spent more than $1 billion since 2003 on at least 66 completed and ongoing programs aimed at developing the rule of law in Afghanistan.

“This effort has focused on areas such as the judicial system, corrections system (detention centers and prisons), informal justice system, legislative reform, legal education, public outreach, and anticorruption efforts,” explains SIGAR.

Citing the U.S. Army’s Center for Law and Military Operations’ Rule of Law Handbook, John Sopko, SIGAR’s inspector general, reports that the legal system in Afghanistan consists of two separate judicial systems that coexist — a formal and an informal system, both of which incorporate Sharia law.

The formal system of law is “practiced by state authorities relying on a mixture between the civil law and elements of Islamic Sharia law,” notes Sopko in the report, while the informal legal system is “based on customary tribal law and local interpretations of Islamic Sharia law.”

“Experts we consulted describe a complex legal system in Afghanistan that incorporates hundreds of years of informal traditions, Islamic Sharia law, former Soviet judicial practices during the 1980s, and modern Western influence since the fall of the Taliban in 2001,” he adds.

A portion of the more than $1 billion spent on rule of law development efforts has been devoted to improving the formal and informal systems in Afghanistan that incorporate Sharia law.

SIGAR does note that “because DOD, DOJ, State, and USAID did not systematically measure and report on their programs’ achievements, it remains unclear what overall outcomes and impact have resulted from the expenditure of more than $1 billion to develop the rule of law in Afghanistan.”…

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