Team Infidel
Forum Spin Doctor
New York Times
March 26, 2008
Pg. 10
By Carlotta Gall
KABUL, Afghanistan — Western countries have failed to deliver $10 billion of nonmilitary assistance pledged to Afghanistan over the last six years and the United States, by far the biggest donor, is responsible for half of the shortfall, a new report published here on Tuesday said.
The report was written by a policy adviser from the British charity Oxfam and published by the Agency Coordinating Body for Afghan Relief, or Acbar, a coalition of Afghan and international nongovernment aid organizations. It warned that development assistance to Afghanistan had been inadequate and in many cases wasteful or ineffective, jeopardizing economic progress and security in the country.
Donor countries pledged $25 billion in aid from 2002 to 2008, but only $15 billion has been disbursed to date, the report states, citing Afghan government figures. The United States, which provides one third of all development assistance to Afghanistan, has spent only $5 billion of the $10.4 billion it has pledged for that period.
Jim Kunder, the acting deputy administrator of the United States Agency for International Development, told The Associated Press that there were always concerns about the speed with which aid was delivered but that the work was being done.
“The U.S. government is on track to provide the aid to Afghanistan that it pledged,” he said.
American officials have also blamed security conditions for slowing assistance programs, including the largest one in the country, the development of the Kajaki dam in the insurgent stronghold of Helmand Province.
The new report is one of several recent studies that have called for more and better organized assistance to Afghanistan. In an attempt to address some of the concerns, the Security Council recently gave the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan greater powers to coordinate international development assistance.
The World Bank has spent only a little more than half of its commitments to Afghanistan, and the European Commission and Germany have disbursed less than two-thirds of theirs, the Acbar report said. The Asia Development Bank and India have disbursed only a third of their commitments, while Japan and Canada were singled out for best meeting their pledges.
The shortfalls in assistance can be partly attributed to poor security, high levels of government corruption and the inability of Afghan institutions to absorb the aid any faster, the report said. “However, the magnitude of the shortfalls underscores the importance of donors increasing efforts to mitigate or adapt to such problems,” it said.
International development aid to Afghanistan remained “woefully inadequate,” the report’s author, Matt Waldman, wrote. At $7 million a day, it is far below the $100 million spent daily on military needs.
It has also fallen far short of development assistance to other postconflict countries, like Bosnia and East Timor. In the two years after 2001 Afghanistan received only $57 per capita in aid, whereas Bosnia received $679 and East Timor $233.
The report also called for a comprehensive review of international assistance, two-thirds of which bypasses the Afghan government and fails to do enough to relieve the poverty of the Afghan people.
The Afghan government says it has no knowledge of where $5 billion of the $15 billion spent since 2001 went, according to the Acbar report, and only half of the money being spent now is being disbursed in concert with the government, it said.
A spokesman for President Hamid Karzai said that the government largely agreed with the findings in the report but that it rejected the report’s criticism of the government for failing to tackle corruption.
The Acbar report estimated that of the $15 billion spent to date, a “staggering” 40 percent had not stayed in Afghanistan but had been repatriated in consultants’ salaries and company profits. More than half the international aid is “tied,” meaning it is bound by procurement rules that resources and services have to be purchased from the donor’s country.
The report singled out A.I.D. for wasteful practices. A road from the Kabul airport to a major intersection near the United States Embassy cost more than $3 million a mile, “at least four times the average cost of building a road in Afghanistan,” Acbar said in a news release issued in Kabul alongside the report. A.I.D. does not finance development through the government but works through profit-making contractors who often subcontract the work to other companies. “Vast sums of aid are lost in the corporate profits of contractors and subcontractors, which can be as high as 50 percent on a single contract,” the report said.
The use of foreign consultants is also costly, at $250,000 to $500,000 a year for each, because of high salaries, generous living allowances and security expenses.
The report also criticized an imbalance in assistance. Too much of the aid goes to the capital, Kabul, and other urban centers, it said, when three-quarters of the population lives in rural areas. Agriculture, the main livelihood of the population, has not been a priority, it added.
A disproportionate amount of the aid is also being spent in the southern part of the country, where the insurgency is strongest, which has created resentment in northern areas, the report said.
March 26, 2008
Pg. 10
By Carlotta Gall
KABUL, Afghanistan — Western countries have failed to deliver $10 billion of nonmilitary assistance pledged to Afghanistan over the last six years and the United States, by far the biggest donor, is responsible for half of the shortfall, a new report published here on Tuesday said.
The report was written by a policy adviser from the British charity Oxfam and published by the Agency Coordinating Body for Afghan Relief, or Acbar, a coalition of Afghan and international nongovernment aid organizations. It warned that development assistance to Afghanistan had been inadequate and in many cases wasteful or ineffective, jeopardizing economic progress and security in the country.
Donor countries pledged $25 billion in aid from 2002 to 2008, but only $15 billion has been disbursed to date, the report states, citing Afghan government figures. The United States, which provides one third of all development assistance to Afghanistan, has spent only $5 billion of the $10.4 billion it has pledged for that period.
Jim Kunder, the acting deputy administrator of the United States Agency for International Development, told The Associated Press that there were always concerns about the speed with which aid was delivered but that the work was being done.
“The U.S. government is on track to provide the aid to Afghanistan that it pledged,” he said.
American officials have also blamed security conditions for slowing assistance programs, including the largest one in the country, the development of the Kajaki dam in the insurgent stronghold of Helmand Province.
The new report is one of several recent studies that have called for more and better organized assistance to Afghanistan. In an attempt to address some of the concerns, the Security Council recently gave the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan greater powers to coordinate international development assistance.
The World Bank has spent only a little more than half of its commitments to Afghanistan, and the European Commission and Germany have disbursed less than two-thirds of theirs, the Acbar report said. The Asia Development Bank and India have disbursed only a third of their commitments, while Japan and Canada were singled out for best meeting their pledges.
The shortfalls in assistance can be partly attributed to poor security, high levels of government corruption and the inability of Afghan institutions to absorb the aid any faster, the report said. “However, the magnitude of the shortfalls underscores the importance of donors increasing efforts to mitigate or adapt to such problems,” it said.
International development aid to Afghanistan remained “woefully inadequate,” the report’s author, Matt Waldman, wrote. At $7 million a day, it is far below the $100 million spent daily on military needs.
It has also fallen far short of development assistance to other postconflict countries, like Bosnia and East Timor. In the two years after 2001 Afghanistan received only $57 per capita in aid, whereas Bosnia received $679 and East Timor $233.
The report also called for a comprehensive review of international assistance, two-thirds of which bypasses the Afghan government and fails to do enough to relieve the poverty of the Afghan people.
The Afghan government says it has no knowledge of where $5 billion of the $15 billion spent since 2001 went, according to the Acbar report, and only half of the money being spent now is being disbursed in concert with the government, it said.
A spokesman for President Hamid Karzai said that the government largely agreed with the findings in the report but that it rejected the report’s criticism of the government for failing to tackle corruption.
The Acbar report estimated that of the $15 billion spent to date, a “staggering” 40 percent had not stayed in Afghanistan but had been repatriated in consultants’ salaries and company profits. More than half the international aid is “tied,” meaning it is bound by procurement rules that resources and services have to be purchased from the donor’s country.
The report singled out A.I.D. for wasteful practices. A road from the Kabul airport to a major intersection near the United States Embassy cost more than $3 million a mile, “at least four times the average cost of building a road in Afghanistan,” Acbar said in a news release issued in Kabul alongside the report. A.I.D. does not finance development through the government but works through profit-making contractors who often subcontract the work to other companies. “Vast sums of aid are lost in the corporate profits of contractors and subcontractors, which can be as high as 50 percent on a single contract,” the report said.
The use of foreign consultants is also costly, at $250,000 to $500,000 a year for each, because of high salaries, generous living allowances and security expenses.
The report also criticized an imbalance in assistance. Too much of the aid goes to the capital, Kabul, and other urban centers, it said, when three-quarters of the population lives in rural areas. Agriculture, the main livelihood of the population, has not been a priority, it added.
A disproportionate amount of the aid is also being spent in the southern part of the country, where the insurgency is strongest, which has created resentment in northern areas, the report said.