Why did UK give £252m to ‘corrupt’ Afghan police?

BRITAIN’S huge aid spending in Afghanistan has been ‘implicated in criminality and human rights abuses’, a damning report finds today.

Some £252 million of taxpayers’ money was given to ‘corrupt’ Afghan police even though they were acting as a paramilitary force and engaged in ‘extortion, torture and extra-judicial killings’, it said.

Senior civil servants repeatedly tried to end the handouts but were ‘overruled at the highest levels of the UK Government’, according to the Independent Commission for Aid Impact (ICAI) watchdog.

ICAI commissioner Sir Hugh Bayley said last night: ‘It’s clear that the remarkable efforts by those working on the UK aid programme made a significant difference to many people in Afghanistan.

‘However, the way the UK pursued its primary objective of building a viable Afghan state contained key flaws that contributed to its ultimate failure, and there are questions around the appropriateness of using UK aid to fund Afghan counter-insurgency operations.’

The study reveals that almost £3.5 billion in UK aid was given to Afghanistan in the past two decades as part of an ‘ambitious’ international attempt to turn it into a stable and functional state. However, there were major ‘flaws’ in this approach as the mission was led by the United States, which wanted to defeat the Taliban and exclude them from the political process.

The Foreign Office said: ‘UK aid improved health, increased school enrolment, provided humanitarian support to the most vulnerable, and led the way in clearing landmines and other unexploded munitions.’