A new report by the Agency Co-ordinating Body for Afghan Relief (Acbar) says the international aid effort in Afghanistan is in large part “wasteful and ineffective”, with as much as 40 per cent of funds spent going back to donor countries in corporate profits and consultant salaries. This is worrying but not really news…
As far back as 2002 a classified private contractor’s report (the irony) on the security situation in Afghanistan described how pointless it was to have major consultancies working in Kabul ‘when what the Afghan officials need are desks, chairs and computers.’
The FT article also reports that the administration of Hamid Karzai has failed to tackle high-level corruption in a government that relies on international handouts for 90 per cent of public spending. Let’s not beat around the bush – corruption is endemic in Afghanistan and while there has been very limited success in building a more transparent and accountable government the story is depressing. Senior drug traffickers for example are routinely captured and sent to the police cells only for a call to come in from a senior government official letting the handcuffed prisoner free. As I said in a previous post follow the drugs, all you find are drug users and drug dealers, but if you follow the money, you don’t know what you’ll find’. According to one anti-narcotics official ‘the sharks are swimming free while the minnows are captured’.
And while it is interesting to know that the cost of engaging a foreign contractor can be as much as $500,000 (€324,000, £252,000) a year, and many donors insist that contractors use material and labour from their own countries rather than sourcing locally; and that countries such as Spain and France are contributing too little, while big donors are failing to fulfil their commitments; I do wonder how NGOs are fairing in Afghanistan?
Surely a more more interesting perspective on aid to Afghanistan would be an holistic account of the donor system? How we in the broadest possible sense are doing.
Finally and as mentioned in the Demos report on national security Acbar also published figures showing how the most insecure provinces benefit the most from international funding – the report suggests that if Helmand were a country, it would rank as the fifth biggest recipient of US development aid. In perhaps the best example of an understatement I can think of Matt Waldman, a policy adviser for Oxfam said rewarding the most volatile provinces was “short-sighted”.
