KABUL – Congressional plans to slash U.S. foreign assistance, including multibillion-dollar aid to Afghanistan, risk undermining the Obama administration’s bid to leave behind a stable nation when it withdraws its troops. Rajiv Shah, a doctor and administrator of the US Agency for International Development (USAID), said pledges from some leading lawmakers to cut funding for his agency, a prime target in Republican belt-tightening plans, would undermine the US fight in Afghanistan and ultimately jeopardise US security.
“In order to have a transition strategy, for our troops to be able to exit, and for us to be able to see gains in stability and governance and development be durable and sustainable, if USAID’s resources are cut back … that will both be costly to American taxpayers and it will be tremendously unwise,” Shah told Reuters. “Worse than all that, it will put our people’s lives at risk. Now would be a terrible time to scale that back.” Shah spoke on a recent visit to Afghanistan, where he met Afghan leaders and visited U.S.-funded aid projects.
Military commanders are racing to show results on the battlefield before they start to send some troops home later this year. Despite record violence in 2010, US President Barack Obama and other Western leaders hope a tenacious Taliban insurgency can be turned back in 2011 as foreign troops seek to put an unsteady Afghan military in the lead by the end of 2014. Shah, 37, said USAID had struggled in the past to hold its aid contractors accountable, but said it had made big strides in maternal health, sending Afghan girls to school, increasing wheat yields and making tentative steps to expand farm exports.
Back in Washington, Shah will be making the case on Capitol Hill that the vacuum to be left by the US troop drawdown makes it all the more important to have a robust package from USAID, the biggest backer of aid activities in Afghanistan. Yet he will face a test in convincing some Republicans, who took control of the US House of Representatives last month and are vowing to slash aid programmes they see as expensive, inefficient and vulnerable to waste and fraud.
