Report: Afghans still need billions in aid
KABUL, Afghanistan — Afghanistan will need vast amounts of foreign funding to keep its government afloat through 2024, a U.S. agency said Friday, even as foreign donors are increasingly angry over the cost of corruption.
The report was issued as the U.S. seeks a peace deal with the Taliban to end the 18-year war in Afghanistan, America’s longest, and to withdraw its troops from the country.
Meanwhile, a senior U.S. commander is warning of an increase in Iranian activity in Afghanistan that poses a risk to American and coalition troops.
International money pays for roughly 75% of all of Afghanistan’s public expenditures. The Special Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction, which issues reports quarterly to Congress, monitors all U.S. spending in the war.
The agency’s latest report was sharply critical of the Afghan government’s efforts to curb corruption, saying it is one of the biggest concerns among frustrated donors.
President Ashraf Ghani’s administration “is more interested in checking off boxes for the international community than in actually uprooting its corruption problem,” the report said, referring to the Afghan government’s failing anti-graft drive.
Ghani’s future is uncertain as final results of last year’s presidential election have yet to be announced, though the preliminary results gave Ghani the win. His main rival, Abdullah Abdullah, who serves as the country’s chief executive in a fragile national unity government with Ghani, has claimed fraud.
Afghanistan ranked last in the Asia-Pacific region for corruption, a global watchdog said in January. According to Transparency International, Afghanistan’s ranking last year — at 173 of the 180 countries it surveyed — was the worst since the group began ranking the country in 2005.
Even as the international community is paying billions of dollars annually, the poverty rate in Afghanistan is climbing. In 2012, 37% of Afghans were listed below the poverty rate, surviving on less than $1 a day. Today that figure has risen to 55% of Afghans.
According to the reconstruction inspector general’s report for the last quarter of 2019, international donors led by Washington provide the Afghan government with $8.5 billion a year to cover everything from security to education and health care, as well as economic reconstruction. The United States is paying $4.2 billion yearly just for Afghanistan’s security and defense forces.
The report added that the overall value of opiates available for export in Afghanistan in 2018 — estimated at between $1.1 billion and $2.1 billion — far outstripped the total value of the country’s legal exports at $875 million.
“Working together, the international community and its Afghan partners can stem the rot of corruption in Afghanistan,” the report said. “But it will take a greater commitment than we have seen so far to make transformative change.”
The U.S. agency’s report also documented an uptick in violence in Afghanistan’s war, as well as a drop in the number of missions completed independently by internationally funded Afghan forces.
Along those lines, Marine Gen. Frank McKenzie, the top U.S. commander for the Middle East, told reporters he is seeing a “worrisome trend” of Iranian malign interference in Afghanistan.
“Iran has always sort of dabbled a little bit in Afghanistan, but they see perhaps an opportunity to get after us and the coalition here through their proxies,” McKenzie said during an unannounced visit to Afghanistan this week. “So we are very concerned about that here as we go forward.”
Iran has long provided money, support and weapons to Shiite militias in Afghanistan. As the war in Syria heated up in recent years, Iran ran an extensive drive to bring in Shiites from Afghanistan and other parts of the region to help support President Bashar Assad. And as that war has wound down, thousands have returned home. Afghan officials have expressed concerns that Iran is still backing and organizing the militia members, and that they could pose a threat to troops, residents and the government.
McKenzie, who left Afghanistan on Friday after a three-day visit, said the coalition is working with the Afghan government to monitor the situation and prevent any problems.
Meanwhile, the coalition’s combat campaign against the Taliban also rages on, even as the U.S. works to hammer out a peace agreement with the insurgent group. Both the U.S. and the Taliban see continued attacks as a way to push the other into a better deal.
“The coalition is going to put pressure on the Taliban to come to the peace table. We’ve always been very clear about that,” McKenzie said in an interview at the new NATO Special Operations Command Center. “If they don’t come, they’re going to continue to be hit and hit hard.”