One indicator of how the U.S. throws money down the black hole known as the Afghanistan government: no one can tell how much money it’s paid to literally thousands of Afghan government workers.
According to a new report from the U.S.’ independent Afghanistan-reconstruction auditor, Arnold Fields, American agencies spent at least three years paying Afghan government officials and “technical advisers” off the books — outside official channels and without “collecting any information” on who they paid and how much they doled out. From 2005 to 2008, and in some cases into 2010, both agencies declined to “centrally manage” their record keeping, allowing an untold amount of aid money to disappear into the pockets of their favored Afghans.
And that went into a lot of pockets. The Afghan Ministry of Finance estimates that U.S. and international donors pay $45 million annually to support 6,600 government employees and advisers, but that’s an undercount, reliant on “incomplete data.” Just this year, after the Ministry demanded the U.S. start a tally of who it pays, at least 900 government officials received U.S. cash, totaling $1 million each month. Score one for think-tanker Anthony Cordesman’s point that U.S. cash is a driver of Afghan corruption.
On top of that, the U.S.’s current method of payment isn’t much better than handing bags full of cash to Afghan officials — something, incidentally, that President Hamid Karzai confirmed this week that the Iranians do with nonchalance. International donors, including the U.S. “have provided salary support directly to government employees and technical advisers without going through the Afghan government, thus bypassing the government’s planning and budgeting processes,” Fields found. And that’s supposed to be an anti-corruption measure, taken out of concern that other Afghan government officials would pocket the cash if it was distributed through the regular budget.
Fields’ report just focuses on money given to civilian government employees in Afghanistan, not payments to Afghan security forces or private-security contractors. Those payments have been linked to the insurgency. Fields links these payments to increased corruption and incompetence: “Providing salary support outside the Afghan government can hinder the government’s ability to plan for the fiscal resources needed to assume responsibility for paying recipients after donor salary support ends.”
It’s worth noting that some U.S. lawmakers don’t consider Fields a competent anti-corruption watchdog. After senators Tom Coburn and Claire McCaskill called for Fields to lose his job for allegedly poor management and investigative skills, in the past week, he’s released a slew of reports about the progress of U.S. civilian efforts in Afghanistan; shoddily-built Afghan police stations in the south; and the volume of reconstruction cash doled out to contractors from 2007 to 2009.
Meanwhile, last night, suspicious packages with white powder, protruding wires and circuitboards were discovered in the U.K. and the U.A.E. The packages were on their way to the U.S., prompting fears of a terrorist “dry run to test Western security.” That happens even as untold amounts of U.S. money disappear into Afghan officials’ pockets — all in the name of fighting terrorism.
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