Billions of dollars directed to Afghanistan wasted | The Globe and Mail

Afghan security personnel inspect at the site of a suicide attack near the election commission office in Kabul, Afghanistan on Oct. 29, 2018.

A report emerged from which the Special Inspector General of the United States for the Reconstruction of Afghanistan said that the aid money has been used to build medical clinics without electricity or water, schools without children and buildings that literally melted in the rain. Coupled with this, the corrupt local officials who were in charge of paying workers with some of the funds created what the audits called “ghost workers”, civil bureaucrats, policemen and soldiers who did not exist, and then kept or diverted the money registered as paid.

Likewise, billions in Western aid to Afghanistan were, including money from Canada. In fact, they have been lost due to widespread waste, neglect of corruption and endemic corruption, according to a United States monitoring agency.

Inspector John Sopko stated, “There is a lot of corruption, [but] most of what we have identified are just stupid and badly managed programs and there is no responsibility, nobody is really responsible for wasting money”.

Recent reports by Mr. Sopko’s office found an alarming lack of financial oversight in addition to the far-reaching mismanagement of two Western trust funds: the World Bank’s Afghanistan Reconstruction Trust Fund and the Law Trust Fund and Order for Afghanistan administered by the UN used to train and equip the Afghan security forces.

What different nations donated

The United States is established as the largest donor of the two funds. Meanwhile, Canadian contributions include the US $ 763.7 million for the reconstruction of Afghanistan from 2002–2018, and the US $ 87.2 million to train the Afghan police. In addition, another US $ 212.9 million went to a NATO fund to train the Afghan army.

For its part, Canada’s foreign affairs department insisted that the World Bank and the UN carry out comprehensive monitoring in order to “ensure that Canadian funds are not wasted in Afghanistan” Similarly, the World Bank restricts donor access to information on how it monitors and accounts for this funding. Maegan Graveline, who is a spokeswoman for the department, said the UN plans to use an electronic payroll system and biometric identification cards for 97 percent of the police by the end of November.

Similarly, Canada’s ambassador to Afghanistan between 2012 and 2013, Glenn Davidson, stated that it is not easy to deliver foreign aid in a war-torn country where it is dangerous or impossible to travel due to the threat of attacks.

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Source: The Globe and Mail