Terror Subsidizers to Receive Billions of Surviving USAID Dollars

A State Department list of 898 approved government grants and contracts authorized by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) includes over $2.5 billion of authorized funding to organizations that have previously supported the charitable infrastructure of designated terrorist organizations.

In March, the State Department provided a document to Congress listing some 5,341 awards terminated as part of the administration’s decimation of USAID, alongside 898 surviving grants.

Surviving beneficiaries that have supported terrorist charitable infrastructure are set to receive, the Middle East Forum has found, a total of $2.5 billion across 103 awards [see Appendix], for projects that the USAID estimates will cost the taxpayer a total of $3.4 billion.

Some $200 million of these awards are earmarked for projects in Gaza, run by organizations with histories of involvement with Hamas proxy organizations or the Hamas government itself.

In addition, USAID has entrusted an additional $73 million to several of these charities for aid work in the Taliban’s Afghanistan, and a further $54 million in Islamist-run Syria.

On April 22, Secretary of State Marco Rubio warned of a “sprawling bureaucracy” at the State Department that “created a system more beholden to radical political ideology than advancing America’s core national interests.”

This “sprawling bureaucracy” at USAID – and its parent organization, the Department of State – maintains long-standing relationships with USAID’s surviving beneficiaries. All are connected through the bloated, incestuous international aid and development industry.

This extends to shared staff. For instance, Sean Carroll, the director of one terror-connected grantee profiled below, ANERA, previously served under the Obama administration as USAID’s Chief of Staff and Chief Operating Officer. Similarly, senior officials of World Vision, another terror-connected USAID beneficiary also profiled below, have been recruited from USAID staff.

Today, USAID still seems to employ bureaucrats who are willing to look the other way as American taxpayers’ dollar subsidize terror infrastructure.

$270 million of USAID awards will be provided to the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC).

The NRC is a leading partner of Hamas in Gaza, running dozens of joint events with the terror group’s “Ministry of Social Development.” The Hamas government praises the NRC for “supporting the projects” of the Hamas ministry.

In fact, the NRC seems to directly train Hamas terror staff, with one Hamas social media posting noting about an event: “The program is funded by the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) and includes the implementation of 10 awareness workshops targeting 220 staff members from the Ministry’s directorates and representatives of local and community councils across the governorates.”

NGO Monitor, a Jerusalem-based research institute, points out: “NRC has longed campaigned for direct Hamas involvement in aid distribution in Gaza. In 2006 it called on the Norwegian government to ‘support Hamas as the democratic elected government and not impose actions that lead to more instability.’”

The French charity, the Agency for Technical Cooperation and Development (ACTED), is slated to receive USAID awards worth over $403 million.

ACTED is a partner in Gaza of the Unlimited Friends Association (UFA), which is involved with senior Hamas leaders and promotes violently anti-Semitic rhetoric across its social media pages.

ACTED and Hamas charity UFA collaborate closely in Gaza

UFA hosts events to provide financial support to “the families of martyrs and prisoners.” These handouts are part of the group’s “Orphan Sponsorship Program.” In since-deleted videos published by the group, the charity’s officials defined orphans to include the children of those killed while resisting “the ongoing slaughter against the Palestinian people.”

Such work is carried out in open collaboration with Hamas. UFA has organized events and invited to its offices prominent Hamas figures such as Mustafa Sawwaf, who calls “Israel’s disappearance ... a necessity [according to] the Koran"; as well as Mohamed Abu-Shkian, a senior Hamas leader who praises the “strikes of the mujahideen” and leads events in Gaza lionizing slain terrorist operatives.

In addition, UFA openly advertises projects funded by U.S. charities in prominent Hamas literature and boasts a certificate of support from Ummah University, an institution in Gaza directly controlled by Hamas’s “Interior Ministry.”

In 2022, multiple Hamas-aligned media outlets, including the terrorist group’s own daily newspaper, Felesteen News, published details of job vacancies at UFA; not as advertisements, but as news stories.

Meanwhile, hatred for Jews permeates UFA’s activities. In 2013, the charity published a social media post stating: “We ask God to drive away the anguish of the heroic prisoners in the Nazi Zionist jails and to free Al-Aqsa Al-Sharif from the filth of the most dirty Jews.”

UFA officials express similar rhetoric on their personal social media. In April 2021, UFA director Jomaa Khadoura called for God to “cleanse Al-Aqsa from the impurity of the Jews.”

ACTED organizes programs in Gaza using both UFA and the Fares Al-Arab Foundation as “implanting partners.”

A day after the October 7 attacks, the Fares Al-Arab Foundation published a statement mourning the “martyrdom” of Sami Labad. A since-deleted social media post from his relative, Haitham Lubbad, claimed that Labad, who worked for Hamas’s Ministry of Health, was killed “assisting the mujahideen on the Gaza Strip border” during Hamas’s October 7 mass-terror attack. Another relative notes he died while “engaged in battle, providing aid and treating the storming fighters in the heart of the carnage.”

Fares staff graduate to work for ACTED. Heba Aldadah, a Gaza-based bookkeeper, previously worked for the terror-aligned group. Aldadah is also a graduate of the Islamic University of Gaza, a key Hamas institution established by the terror groups’ founder, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin.

Social media pages of the Hamas regime in Gaza discuss meetings with the Fares Al-Arab Foundation. At one meeting, Hamas officials pledged “collaboration” and “reaffirmed” the “distribution of aid based on the beneficiary lists approved by the Ministry of Social Development.”

Alongside other USAID beneficiaries such as Norwegian Refugee Council, Save the Children and Catholic Relief Services, ACTED has pressed the U.S. government not to designate the Houthi terrorist organization, whose motto is “Death to America, Death to Israel, Curse the Jews, Victory to Islam.”

In Gaza, $22 million of USAID awards to ANERA, with an estimated total cost of $50 million, are set to fund “Gaza Health Recovery Activity.”

ANERA is a long-standing partner of a Hamas terror charity, the Bayader Association for Environment and Development. Bayader is closely involved with senior Hamas officials, including the son of the late Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh.

Founded in 2007, shortly after Hamas’s takeover of the Gaza Strip, Bayader operates in close cooperation with the Hamas regime. Its 2021 annual report notes “coordination” and “meetings” with Hamas’s Ministry of Interior, Ministry of Works, Ministry of Social Affairs and Ministry of Agriculture.

Bayader staff openly praise terror. The charity’s financial director, Abd Rabbo Saeed Abu Haddaf, recently mourned the death of Palestinian Islamic Jihad’s Ahmed Abu Deka, whom he referred to as a “brother and friend.”

ANERA is also a partner of the Hamas-linked, violently anti-Semitic, Unlimited Friends Association, profiled above. USAID monies have previously paid for this partnership.

ANERA appears to coordinate its work in Gaza with Hamas’s Ministry of Social Development, allowing Hamas officials to “finalize and approved the selection of beneficiaries.”

ANERA appears to have a long history of such partnerships. In 2000, an ANERA report appears to disclose a partnership with the Ihsan Society, which the U.S. government later designated as a Hamas front in 2005.

In 2017, a report from the Israel Law Center alleged that money sent through ANERA to the Palestinian territories was “used to support Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) kindergartens that actively indoctrinate children in hatred and killing of Israeli civilians, as well as other PIJ and Hamas organizations, thus enabling them to finance terrorist activity, which is forbidden by U.S. law.”

ANERA staff openly express violent ideas, without apparent censure from top charity officials. In 2014, Mousa Shawwa, ANERA’s “logistics coordinator,” endorsed a call on social media for God to “erase the Jews.” Ibrahim Zanoun serves as ANERA’s photographer in Gaza. His own social media posts include praise for the Hamas “resistance” and warnings that Hamas will “soon broadcast a video threatening the Jews.” Other ANERA staff include Ibrahim Najjar, who expressed support for the “brave prisoners” in Israeli jails and venerates the Hamas founder Sheikh Yassin, posting pictures of the terrorist leader.

ANERA’s Palestine director is Sandra Rasheed. Rasheed is an overt advocate for radical action, encouraging direct action efforts by extremist far-Left organizations, supporting student campus protestors, and posting inane social media agitprop that promise resistance by “land, by air and by sea – by any means and in any conditions.”

Naser Qadous, ANERA’s agricultural programs manager, posted cryptic messages of support for Hamas’s October 7 attacks, which were ‘liked’ by other ANERA staff. Qadous later shared Hamas-produced propaganda about its treatment of Israeli hostages, with the ANERA official declaring that one hostage, pictured surrounded by armed terrorists, had merely been a “guest.”

And ANERA’s former “national coordinator” in Lebanon, Mohamed Alsayed (who now claims to serve as the charity’s “youth sports coordinator”) also welcomed the October 7^th attacks, referring to the day of the mass killings as a “beautiful morning.”

For just their programs in Gaza, three Western charities, Save the Children, International Medical Corps, and Catholic Relief Services, are set to receive a combined total of over $142 million. Across the globe, active USAID grants to these three charities total almost $1.5 billion.

Both Catholic Relief Services and the International Medical Corps have sub-granted hundreds of thousands of dollars of USAID funding in the past to the Bayader Association for Environment and Development, the Hamas charity (profiled above) which “coordinates” with Hamas’s Ministry of Interior, Ministry of Works, Ministry of Social Affairs and Ministry of Agriculture.

Radical staff move easily between these groups in Gaza. Ahlam Jama, a Bayader “project coordinator,” previously worked for Catholic Relief Services. Jana has propagated material that mourns the death of Baha Abu al-Ata, a Palestinian Islamic Jihad leader, and vows to “strike Tel Aviv.”

Save the Children is also a partner of Bayader. In 2022, Save the Children appeared to take part in a meeting organized by the Hamas’s Ministry of Social Development.

USAID awards to World Vision of $400 million, at an estimated cost to the taxpayer of over $537 million, remain in effect.

In 2014, a USAID grant of $723,405 to World Vision for a project in Sudan’s Blue Nile state, $200,000 was to be directed to a sub-grantee: the Islamic Relief Agency (ISRA).

ISRA, however, was and remains a listed terror organization. The U.S. designated the Khartoum-based group as a terror-financing organization in 2004, because of its links to Osama bin Laden and his organization Maktab al-Khidamat (MK), the precursor of al-Qaeda. According to the U.S. Treasury, ISRA established formal cooperation with MK in 1997. By 2000, ISRA had raised $5 million for bin Laden’s group. The Treasury Department notes that ISRA officials even sought to help “relocate [bin Laden] to secure safe harbor for him.” It further reports that ISRA raised funds in 2003 in Western Europe specifically earmarked for Hamas suicide bombings.

The 2004 designation included all of ISRA’s branches, including a U.S. office named the Islamic American Relief Agency (IARA-USA). Over a decade ago, prosecutors found that IARA illegally transferred over $1.2 million to Iraqi insurgents and other terror groups, including, reportedly, the Afghan terrorist Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.

Given widespread media reporting, it seems likely that USAID and World Vision knew of ISRA’s terrorism activities and designation status. ISRA’s activities were close to home. In 2012, former Congressman Mark Siljander, a frequent traveler to Sudan who signed public declarations both authored and promoted by World Vision, went to jail for lobbying for ISRA’s U.S. branch, using stolen USAID money.

Notwithstanding, USAID issued the grant to ISRA through World Vision, only pausing the process when World Vision finally felt impelled to talk with USAID about its terror partner’s inclusion on the U.S. terror list, doing so after a whistleblower came forward.

World Vision desperately sought to circumvent the terror link proscription. In 2015, World Vision wrote to the Treasury Department and USAID Jeremy Konyndyk, the director of USAID’s Office of U.S. Foreign Disaster Assistance, to apply for a new license from USAID to pay ISRA “monies owed for work performed.” According to Larry Meserve, USAID’s mission director for Sudan, World Vision argued that if they did not pay ISRA, “their whole program will be jeopardized.”

Certainly, ISRA and the Islamist Sudanese regime sought to pressure the complicit World Vision to act. World Vision, in turn, sent panicked and bullying emails to government officials demanding the release of the money and even threatening legal action. Treasury documents demonstrate that high-ranking staff for U.S. Congressman Adam Smith (D-WA), then-Ranking Member and later Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, repeatedly reached out to the Treasury Department on World Vision’s behalf.

On May 7, 2015, the license was granted, and USAID began “a one-time transfer of approximately $125,000 to ISRA.”

An investigation by the Senate Finance Committee, based on the Middle East Forum’s findings, criticized World Vision’s obfuscatory “posture” during their investigation, and suggested the evangelical charity risks a similar scandal in the future.

In fact, World Vision was working with ISRA for years before the scandal was brought to USAID’s attention. More astonishingly, after the scandal, it appears World Vision branches were still working with the terrorist organization. A World Vision job posting posted in December 2015, explicitly lists a partnership with ISRA as part of the job description.

ISRA was not World Vision’s first or last involvement with a terrorist organization. In 2006, World Vision signed a joint memoranda with the U.S. designated terror group Interpal, a financial supporter of Hamas. In 2012, World Vision appeared to use Australian government dollars to fund a known proxy for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).

In 2022, World Vision’s office in the Palestinian territories seemingly took part in a meeting organized by the Hamas’s Ministry of Social Development.

In 2022, an Israeli court convicted and sentenced World Vision’s manager of operations for Gaza, Mohammad Halabi, on terror financing charges. Halabi was initially accused of diverting as much as $50 million of World Vision funds to Hamas.

World Vision repeatedly stressed Halabi’s innocence, but seemingly refused to provide requested documentation to both Israeli authorities and the U.S. Congress. Hamas, however, seemed to consider Halabi important. In February 2025, the terrorist organization included the World Vision employee on its list of demanded prisoners in an exchange with Israel.