Friday, January 31, 2014

Never send a dollar to do an Afghans job.


The dollar will disappear
and the Afghan will no longer need to do the job, if he was able to do so in the first place.
Millions of dollars in U.S. aid is flowing into Afghanistan even though the ministries receiving the funds are incapable of managing such large sums of money, a U.S. report said Thursday.

Despite moves by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) to boost safeguards over direct assistance to the Afghan government, "a number of troubling issues remain," a watchdog group created by Congress found....

The audit by the watchdog, Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), may well exacerbate the situation as Karzai has long accused Washington of trying to undermine his authority.

The U.S. has committed some $1.6 billion in direct aid to the Afghan government this year to fund some 18 programs across 10 ministries.

But according to SIGAR, which oversees Afghan reconstruction, "USAID contractors assessed 16 Afghan ministries and found they are unable to manage and account for funds."

"USAID's own risk reviews of seven Afghan ministries concluded each ministry is unable to manage U.S. direct assistance funds," it added, pointing to a high level of corruption among Afghan officials.

Despite its findings, USAID "waived its own requirements" for direct assistance and has "not required the Afghan ministries to fix most of the risks identified prior to receiving U.S. money."

The watchdog also maintained that USAID had sought to hide its findings from Congress, which is responsible for setting U.S. budgets.
But if Karzai of the Afghans keeps refusing to sign any agreement to keep troops in the country, we won't have to worry about this next year.

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