New Delhi

On one side, the US administration banned the Pakistan-based terrorist outfit Lashkar-e-toiba after it carried out the 2008 Mumbai attacks and on the other hand, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) continued to fund it.

Falah-e-Aaam Foundation which is the front for the Lashkar e toiba has received funds to the tune of approximately $110,000 from the USAID. The fund was routed through the umbrella charity organization called Helping Hand for Relief and Development (HHRD), an Islamist organization with ties to jihadist organizations in South Asia.

The Trump government has since disbanded the USAID raising a storm all over the world.

This disclosure has been made by Amjad Taha, an expert in Strategic Political Affairs (Middle East), Author, Analyst, and Researcher on X:

Did you know that USAID provided $110,000 in funding to jihadist groups in South Asia, including one that targeted India? When exposed, they merely launched an internal investigation. USAID funded HHRD, a Michigan-based Islamist charity with ties to jihadist groups, including…

— Amjad Taha أمجد طه (@amjadt25) February 3, 2025

According to the Middle East Forum portal meforg.org, the Inspector General for the United States Agency for International Development is investigating USAID’s funding of Helping Hand for Relief and Development, an Islamist organization with ties to jihadist organizations in South Asia.

“The inspector general for the federal agency charged humanitarian projects throughout the world has opened an investigation into grants the agency has given to Helping Hand for Relief and Development (HHRD), a Muslim charity that has cooperated with jihadist organizations operating in South Asia.

The investigation comes after years of reports about HHRD’s Islamist ties by Middle East Forum (MEF) researchers.

The Washington Examiner reported on February 28, 2024, that the Inspector General for the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) opened an investigation in February 2021, soon after the agency gave $110,000 to HHRD, described by the news outlet as “a Michigan-based charity that lawmakers have warned shares ties to terrorists, including Pakistan’s Falah-e-Insaniyat Foundation.”

In 2023, U.S. Rep. Michael T. McCaul (R-Texas), chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, sent a letter to USAID Administrator Samantha Powerasking her to suspend the grant, which was made “despite longstanding, detailed allegations that HHRD is connected to designated terrorist organizations, terror financiers, and extremist groups.”

Amazingly enough, the controversy was not enough to stop the Biden Administration from granting another $73,000 to HHRD in 2023, as the Examiner reported. In a follow-up story published on March 1, 2024, the Washington Examiner quoted numerous lawmakers who expressed outrage that the agency continued to give funds to HHRD even after the previously unreported investigation.

“Under no circumstances should taxpayer dollars go to organizations that sympathize with terrorist groups,” Marco Rubio (R-Florida) told the Examiner.

News of the investigation and the subsequent Congressional outrage comes after several years of reporting and research by Sam Westrop, who has written extensively about the ties between HHRD and two other organizations — Jamaat e Islami (JI) and Lashkar e Taiba (LeT). Westrop, director of the Middle East Forum’s Islamist Watch project, first documented the ties between HHRD, JI, and LeT in an article published in National Review in 2018 which reported about a conference that took place in Timegara, Pakistan, late the previous year.

“Other organizations sponsoring the event included the Falah-e-Insaniat Foundation and the Milli Muslim League, the charitable and political wings, respectively, of the notorious Pakistani terrorist organization Lashkar-e-Taiba. In 2016, the U.S. government designated the Falah-e-Insaniat Foundation as a terrorist organization.

Today Hafiz Saeed, the leader of Lashkar-e-Taiba and the mastermind behind the deadly 2008 Mumbai attacks, lives freely in Pakistan, despite a $10 million U.S. bounty,” Westrop wrote.

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Another MEF-produced piece, published in the Sunday Guardian in 2020, called attention to the role Perkins Coie, the international law firm that peddled the “Steele Dossier” documents, played in HHRD’s efforts to falsely distance itself from Islamism in South Asia.