Editor in Chief: Moh. Reza Huwaida Friday, March 29th, 2024

The Horrible Corruption And Future Strategies

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The Horrible Corruption  And Future Strategies

According to the independent media sources and government statistics, more than 1.4 trillion dollars have been spent in Afghanistan by US and its allies since the ouster of Taliban in 2001. This huge amount of money includes all the expenditure like military budget, infrastructure and spending for development and non-development projects. Of course, the majority of this amount went back to US in the form of salaries to the forces and large numbers of advisors and trainers and of course, giant US contractors and construction companies. The money given to the NGOs also makes a huge amount but majority of these funds were spent for the salaries of their heads who were from foreign countries like US and a number of European countries and in this way, the funds failed to achieve their objectives.

Without going into details of the money spent and wasted, the international spending on Afghanistan leaves behind a sad story. Even after spending of billions of dollars, nothing has much changed for the common public. The biggest problem still faced by Afghans is the absence of a firmly established and smoothly running factories and other organs of economy due to which the country is not able to generate its own revenue and its key institutions are still dependent on international donations even for their daily operations. As for 2014, the revenue of the government was slightly higher than 2 billion dollars while it needed about 9 billion dollars for its expenses which indicates that government is going to depend on international donations for many years to come.

Due to the poorly-planned and uncontrolled spending in last 13 years of democracy, majority of the money was wasted in unnecessary projects and ended up in the pockets of a few. Due to this fact, the direct effects of it hardly reached to majority of the masses who are still living in the miserable conditions. As stated in a number of reports by international organizations, majority of Afghans are still living below the line of poverty. The system of roads is present only in major cities while majority of the highways have been destroyed by IEDs and heavy military convoys of foreign and national forces. Thousands of schools have been built in every corner of the country but dozens of schools are destroyed by Taliban and other anti-state elements every year. According to a UN report, more than 100 schools were destroyed in2013 alone and the condition was not much different for 2014. In the same way, majority of public still has no access to clean drinking water while almost all the remote towns and villages are without electricity. The differences between some major cities and small towns and villages is a source of great frustration for the majority of masses and may be the reason for their overall disdain for this system that has benefitted a very few and left the majority deprived of its benefits.

The condition is really disturbing and surprising for many experts inside and outside the country. War-time spending or massive government spending has been found very effective in bringing economic change in an area on a vast scale. Americans came out of the painful pangs of the Great Depression by increased government spending in the beginning and then during and after the Second World War. In the same way, absolutely destroyed nations of Europe soon came out of their destruction and built their countries in a short span of time by the huge aid of American government. According to this plan, called Marshall Plan, a total of 103 billion dollars were spent from 1948-52 in sixteen war-torn countries of Europe. This spending brought a wave of economic activities in these countries and soon these countries were able to recover from the effects of war and it didn’t take long until these nations also got included among the developed nations of the world. However, in case of Afghanistan, all the plans and expectations have not worked accordingly and we are still many years far before we become a sustainable nation, without depending on foreign aid for meeting our budget requirements.

The major reason for this miserable condition is the wide-spread corruption which is verified by the annual reports of Transparency International according to which the country always acquires either of the first two positions among the most corrupt nations of the world. Practically, we are considered to be the most corrupt nation on earth. But it was the bad luck of the country that corruption started on all the different levels right from the first day when the international donations started flowing into the country.

As claimed by Afghans during the reign of Hamid Karzai, the level of corruption rises as high to the generals of international forces, the owners and executive officers of US and European contractors who won the projects worth billions of dollars. The level of corruption is also high on the lower levels but they never had any access to the gigantic amount of money being brought and wasted in the country.

Due to this massive corruption, if the conditions of common public has not witnessed any visible change, there has emerged a small group that has accumulated unbelievable amount of money and with the help of this money, has bought unlimited power and approach in the country. From this perspective, the fate of the country is restricted in a few hands only and they have made a cartel in which their own relatives or class people get access to the power and all the resources of the country. It is due to this unequal distribution of money that some people in Kabul and other major cities can afford the most expensive luxury vehicles of the world and live in the unbelievably expensive villas and farm-houses.

But the biggest blow of this corruption was to give birth to a system when corruption and bribe-acceptance has become the trend of the day and it is considered as something of routine, starting from a watchman to the important government officials. As this virus has penetrated deep into the society and its members, it would take many years before the people get rid of this habit. But if not, the resultant consequences might bring an end to already tattered country.

In the future, the main focus of our government and international powers should be to strengthen the economy and infrastructure of the country as majority of people have been found to be involved in corruption due to economic fears and uncertainties. In the same way, more funding would be needed to educate people for living a decent and dignified life, and to weed out the corruption from the roots of the society. This would be the prime agenda and objective of our present and future governments as well.

Muhammad Rasool Shah is the permanent writer of the Daily Outlook Afghanistan. he can be reached at muhammadrasoolshah@gmail.com

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