It is now an open secret that a considerable amount of aid that flowed to Afghanistan did not reach to deserving people. The implementing organizations, personnel and officials who had the responsibility of transferring these aids into support and assistance to the poor and deprived people of Afghanistan could only manage to benefit themselves. The project-based approach towards the problems in the country and utilization of the fund on the same approach has not provided sustainable solutions. Both the organizations and personnel who implement projects have considered themselves responsible during the duration of the projects and after that they have forgotten their responsibilities.
Moreover, the monitoring and evaluation mechanism has been very weak. In most of the cases, there has not been any monitoring and evaluation of the project and in other cases when there has been any sort of monitoring or evaluation; it has been tainted by corruption.
In many cases there have been developments made only on the reporting documents. Many projects exist only on the papers, while in reality there is no activity at the project sights. These all facts have led to a situation where billions of dollars of aid have not done enough to make Afghan society solve its major issues and stand on its own.
In a current revelation, Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) has said that US Agency for International Development (USAID) has provided “inaccurate” data about the location of nearly two dozen health facilities in Afghanistan’s western zone.
SIGAR’s inspection of the $259.6 million Partnership Contracts for Health (PCH) program has found “substantial inaccuracies” in the GPS coordinates USAID provided for 23 of the 63 healthcare facilities it was funding in Herat province.
The inspection has revealed that the location of the 23 facilities were about 6 miles from the GPS coordinates provided by USAID; seven were more than three miles from the coordinates and 16 others were located less than three miles from the provided location data.
SIGAR stated that it could determine that only 19 facilities actually existed of the remaining 40 medical centers it examined. It also pointed out issues with the conditions of some of the facilities their inspection teams visited. It noted that four of the 23 clinics lacked water or electricity.
The watchdog however could not visit remaining facilities due to “security conditions.” The condition of those facilities would definitely be worse than the ones that were inspected as they cannot be easily monitored.
After the end of Taliban regime, there were hopes that Afghanistan would be able to move towards betterment. The extremist and repressive government of Taliban would be replaced with a modern and welfare-seeking one. The war torn country would be able to have some time in reconstruction process and the people of Afghanistan would be able to have a life wherein they would be able to have a sigh of relief and definitely their basic rights. The opportunity was great as well, as the international community started assisting the country militarily, technically and above all financially.
Billions of Dollars poured in the country for both military support and development projects. But if we analyze the socio-political and socio-economic scenario in the country the development does not seem as great as it should have been. Most of these aids were devoured by corruption instead of being spent for the intended purposes as mentioned in the case above.
Today, corruption has penetrated into our social behavior. It is now a part of routine life to be corrupt. From a very minor to the most major matter, we find corruption ruling the roost.
One of the major problems in tackling with corruption in our country is that the controlling mechanism itself is involved in it. The government that should be on the forefront to curb this menace, itself has been a major contributor in this regard. There have been many major occasions of corruption when current administration has been blamed for being directly involved in the matter. On most of the occasions the government has blamed the Western supporters to be generating corruption in the country. Western allies, on the other hand, have kept on insisting that Afghan authorities must carry out serious measures to curb the overgrowing corruption; however, the outcome is yet to be produced in this regard. The Western allies have spent billions of dollars in supporting the Afghan government and people but the outcomes have not been satisfactory as they have not been very much careful in this regard. And already much of the money has been misused by corruption.
Nevertheless, in the process, the supporters of Afghanistan have lost their trust from the Afghan authorities and are mostly disappointed from what has been achieved after more than a decade of expenditure and hard work.
Corruption in Afghanistan is now a complex phenomenon that requires extensive efforts from both national and international authorities to be comprehended and resolved. Definitely, the anti-corruption institutions, equipped with authority and facilities can be major contributors in curbing it and Afghan government needs to support them appropriately.
International community on other hand must also ensure that the aid that they provide through different NGO’s should not be misused. There should be strong control and monitoring mechanism and it should be made sure that the aid money must reach the needy and deserving people of Afghanistan; otherwise, the aid would further deteriorate Afghan society instead of doing it any good.