> Overall, confidence in governmental and nongovernmental organizations has increased, with the exception of the Independent Election Commission, which has seen confidence drop from 43.3% in 2018 to 42.3% in 2019. As in previous years, Afghans have the most confidence in religious leaders (71.2%). Compared to 2018, confidence in MPs has gone up by 10.2 percentage points, from 42.3% in 2018 to 52.6% in 2019, the highest level so far. Confidence in the following organizations has improved since last year: government ministers (up 6.1 percentage points, to 44.4%), national NGOs (up 4.0 percentage points, to 53.3%), provincial councils (up 4.7 percentage points, to 55.6%) and international NGOs (up 4.9 percentage points, to 47.3%)
So religious leaders (presumably non-Taliban) have much stronger support than the government or NGOs.
"The Asia Foundation (TAF), a Central Intelligence Agency proprietary, was established in 1954 to undertake cultural and educational activities on behalf of the United States Government in ways not open to official U.S. agencies."[17]
The Asia Foundation is an outgrowth of the Committee for a Free Asia, which was founded by the U.S. government in 1951.[18] CIA funding and support of the Committee for a Free Asia and the Asia Foundation were assigned the CIA code name "Project DTPILLAR".[19]
In 1954, the Committee for a Free Asia was renamed the Asia Foundation (TAF) and incorporated in California[20] as a private, nominally non-governmental organization devoted to promoting democracy, rule of law, and market-based development in post-war Asia.
In the 1950s, the Asia Foundation “clandestinely supported anti-Communist motion picture industry personnel, ranging from producers, directors, and technicians to critics, writers, and general intellectuals in many parts of Asia.”[21]
Among the original founding officers of the board, there were several presidents/chairmen of large companies including T.S. Peterson, CEO of Standard Oil of California (now Chevron), Brayton Wilbur, president of Wilbur-Ellis Co., and J.D. Zellerbach, chairman of the Crown Zellerbach Corporation; four university presidents including Grayson Kirk from Columbia, J.E. Wallace Sterling of Stanford, and Raymond Allen from UCLA; prominent attorneys including Turner McBaine and A. Crawford Greene; Pulitzer Prize-winning writer James Michener; Paul Hoffman, the first administrator of the Marshall Plan in Europe; and several major figures in foreign affairs.
In 1966, Ramparts revealed that the CIA was covertly funding a number of organizations, including the Asia Foundation.[17] A commission authorized by President Johnson and led by Secretary of State Rusk determined that the Asia Foundation should be preserved and overtly funded by the US government. Following this change, The Asia Foundation was classified as a private, nonprofit, nongovernmental organization under the section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code.[22] The Foundation began to restructure its programming, shifting away from its earlier goals of "building democratic institutions and encouraging the development of democratic leadership" toward an emphasis on Asian development as a whole (CRS 1983).”