KABUL-
A United States watchdog has prepared a report that puts a question mark over the efficacy of billions of US dollars flowing in to Afghan government treasury, according to a news report by New York Times published on Thursday.
Three years ago, United States hired two global auditing firms to determine whether Afghanistan could be trusted to safeguard the funds being sent from Washington.
The findings were so grim that American officials fought to keep them private but the money has continued to flow despite warnings from the auditors that none of the 16 Afghan ministries could be counted on to keep the funds from being stolen or wasted, says the news report.
The findings by the auditors are detailed in a report that was expected to be published on Thursday by the US government watchdog, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction.
Most of the Afghan government’s expenses depend upon foreign aid. The largest contribution comes from Washington which has pushed in recent years to route more of it directly to the Afghan government and less through programs managed by American officials.
Now accounting for about half of all American aid to the government, the direct assistance was a centrepiece of the Obama administration’s strategy to build a reliable national government that could benefit from on the battlefield gains made by the surge of American forces in 2009 and 2010.
Just as the surge yielded military gains against the Taliban that have proved to be temporary, the efforts to transform the Afghan government have been undercut by the corruption that pervades Mr. Karzai’s administration, as illustrated in the audits and the internal American risk assessments they engendered.
For instance, $236.5 million allotted for the Afghan Ministry of Public Health was in danger of embezzlement “arising from payment of salaries in cash,” according to a United States Agency for International Development risk assessment cited by the inspector general.
The Afghan Mines Ministry could be “paying higher prices for commodities and services to finance kickbacks and bribes,” another assessment based on the audits said.
John F. Sopko, the special inspector general, who is known for his blunt and prosecutorial style, called the strategy of delivering more direct assistance “the biggest gamble with taxpayer money that U.S.A.I.D. has ever made.”
Sopko provided the report to The New York Times ahead of its public release. The report conclusively acknowledged that the aid agency was simply following a policy set by senior officials in the Obama administration, and that direct aid payments to the Afghan government would probably continue no matter what problems were found. His chief recommendation was that the agency applies more pressure on Afghan ministries to clean up their operations.
US officials have allocated $896 million in assistance to date that they want to deliver directly to Afghan ministries. However, corruption issues have led to a disbursement of only $201.7 million of the actual amount.
