Grey areas in US legislation could mean that American taxpayers may be helping finance terrorism in Afghanistan, a report has revealed.
The report from the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) calls on US Congress to change the $100,000 threshold on reconstruction contracts in Afghanistan to include the 80 percent that evade scrutiny.
According to the document, titled "Contracting with the Enemy", these oversights mean that "millions of contracting dollars could be diverted to forces seeking to harm US Military and civilian personnel and derail the multi-billion dollar reconstruction effort."
The report describes the ways in which the US Department of Defence can strengthen legislation to prevent abetting enemy activity.
Last year, the US invested around $1.7 million and awarded 9,733 contracts in Afghanistan. It is unclear from the report how much of this may have been diverted to the insurgency.
Last July, SIGAR warned that many of the reconstruction projects that the US had invested in were behind schedule and would not be finished before the full troop withdrawal in 2014, potentially creating instability.