The US Government Is Stealing a Significant Part of Its Own Aid to Afghanistan
By Syrializm analytics
In the past couple of weeks, US media was overwhelmed with news saying that Russia in paying rewards to Taliban for killing US soldiers.
Despite the recent US intelligence report which been giving to Us president Donald Trump, confirming that, there is no evidence that can prove these allegations.
There is no secret under the current difficult situation in the whole world, more specifically the United States, that is under huge pressure from Covid-19, to economic crisis caused by the virus epidemic and the fall of the global oil price.
This year is Election year, and there is serious situation that will determine the results.
Since last year the United States enter a dialogue with Taliban, to discuss US withdrawal from Afghanistan, after two decades of the US intervention after 9/11 attacks, which leads to removing Taliban from power and attack al Qaeda.
Since that time, Afghanistan remained under destabilized fate, with week government, corrupted leaders, and still Taliban is in the country fighting and controlling areas in the country.
With that, the United States, kept on accusing Afghani figures of corruption, and stilling the US aids that supposedly going to build the country.
As a matter of fact, the Americans are doing the same.
For almost two decades, Afghanistan and the presence of the NATO and US contingent, Washington formally allocated large-scale funds not only for security assistance, but also for the civil reconstruction and development of this country.
Since 2001, approximately $130 billion was sent to Afghanistan, however, not all the money reached the country, as significant part of it remained in the United States.
A numerous reports of the US Inspector General for the Reconstruction of Afghanistan, J.Sopko. confirmed this fact with many journalist reports and articles full of material evidence prove the existence of in fact a US corruption in Afghanistan.
As a result, corruption schemes for appropriating funds allocated to Afghanistan by the Americans themselves only worsened the already difficult economic situation in the country, which is trying to recover from military and political turmoil.
A question arises as to how those involved in the contract manage to retain a significant share of all tranches.
The fact is that for the distribution of financial assistance to Afghanistan, there is a multi-level system of contracts, with the participation of US private contractors and subcontractors to assign financial aid to Afghanistan.
first of all, USAID is used, through which corrupt officials take about 50% of financial flows. For example, in the case of the program for the advancement of women in Badakhshan and Khost provinces, the share of appropriated funds reached 90-95 %.
As a standard scheme, USAID transfers funds for the project to an Afghan agency that justifies its deliberately inflated cost to the local Ministry of Finance.
After the contract is cashed out, half of this amount is given to USAID-related individuals. Grants from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund are probably used in the same way, but in smaller amounts due to the greater number of witnesses in international organizations.
The very scale of US financial assistance, the feasibility of which is ambiguously assessed within the United States, also raises questions.
In February 2020, a US Congress report noted that the amount of aid allocated significantly exceeds the capabilities of the Afghan economy.
According to the Inspector General, the amount of funds should be from 15 to 45% of the country’s GDP, while in 2007 and 2010, US grants to Afghanistan amounted to more than 100% of Afghanistan’s GDP. Obviously, such spending is not effective, but creates opportunities for plunder.
At the same time, attempts by US politicians to reduce spending on Afghanistan are met with resistance from the military, who are interested in maintaining a significant source of income, as well as private contractors involved in this area.
On March 23, 2020, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced a $ 1 billion reductions in aid to Kabul due to the inability of two presidential contenders’ current president, who is actually won the elections Ashraf Ghani and the other presidential election candidate Abdullah Abdullah to agree on power-sharing over highly questionable election dates.
However, there is no confirmation that Washington is fulfilling the promises of the head of the Department of State.
Recently, Democrat Senators asked US Secretary of Defense Mark Esper to report on cost reduction.
However, the report was not provided, and apparently, the Pentagon leaves this issue open, and the military clearly doesn’t want to cut aid by reducing its articles.
The ultimate fact is that the US defense industry has a special interest in the funds allocated to Afghanistan.
Purchases and deliveries of goods to US and NATO contingents, as well as to Afghan security forces, are often carried out without regard to economic expediency and at inflated prices that are favorable to US manufacturers.
So, instead of building a factory in Afghanistan that would produce for example cartridges for M-4 and M-16 rifles at 12 cents apiece, Washington continues to buy cartridges from its suppliers for the needs of the Afghan security forces at the price of 57 cents apiece!
In addition, the US military refused Russian kerosene at 94 cents per liter, buying it in Greece at $ 1.4 per liter.
In order to maintain control, the United States provides financial assistance to the Afghan security forces through its own fund, not international structures.
The US contractors on civil projects use the same principle with overstating the real cost of goods and services, including those supplied through USAID.
For example, recently, not without their participation, the Afghani Ministry of Health sold about 10,000 tests for Coronavirus at a price of $48 each when their real cost is no more than $5!?
The most “tasty” contracts are the supply of oil products for sure, and supplying the Afghani army and the NATO contingent with weapons, military equipment and uniforms, which are lobbied by US congressmen whose wives get good positions on the boards of directors of the respective companies.
At the same time, the real recipients of kickbacks are engaged in dirty work and aren’t advertised.
There is no surprise, that US aid to Afghanistan, despite its astronomical size (the amount of aid exceeded the funds allocated under the Marshall Plan for the reconstruction of post-war Europe), only allows the US military and contractors involved in its distribution to enrich themselves, while in Afghanistan the result of such assistance is not felt and its effectiveness in general is almost zero.
Recently, the media reported on the attempt of the top leadership of Afghanistan to redirect the flow of foreign financial assistance to themselves.
In April 2020, President Ghani bypassed the Parliament and announced the reform of the Ministry of Finance and the re-subordination of a number of its departments responsible for budget issues, state duties, and customs duties to the presidential administration.
However, the Department of State criticized Ghani’s decision and immediately accused him with corruption.
Thus, and immediately after such comments, the Afghani President withdrew his initiative.
The ugly truth that, the political dependence of Kabul on Washington plays into the hands of US corruption schemes, as those who behind all that corruption in the United States, clearly don’t want to lose control over external financial flows to Afghanistan and certainly they won’t allow even their wards to distribute them.
It’s certainly the US house with all that history of corruption, as Afghanistan represent a tiny example, honorably mentioning Iraq perhaps, the US house is made of a fragile glass, which won’t allow those in Washington to stone others in this world that is suffering from Uncle Sam depravity, which is more dangerous and deadly than all viruses and epidemics on this earth.
