RAWA: From the terrible conditions of main highways, one can easily conclude that Mr. Karzai has done nothing tangible in the past 4 years to rebuild the country. Millions of $ has been given to Afghanistan by donor countries but much of it is being grabbed by warlords, NGOs and UN workers.
RAWA is the oldest political/social organization of Afghan women struggling for peace, freedom, democracy and women's rights in fundamentalism-blighted Afghanistan since 1977.
RAWA bericht:
'How US dollars disappear in Afghanistan: quickly and thoroughly.
During the past five years, the US and many other donor nations pledged billions of dollars to Afghanistan, yet Afghans keep asking: "Where did the money go?"
Remember when peaceful, democratic, reconstructed Afghanistan was advertised as the exemplar for the extreme makeover of Iraq? In August 2002, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was already proclaiming the new Afghanistan "a breathtaking accomplishment" and "a successful model of what could happen to Iraq." As everybody now knows, the model isn't working in Iraq. So we shouldn't be surprised to learn that it's not working in Afghanistan either.
To understand the failure -- and fraud -- of reconstruction in Afghanistan, you have to take a look at the peculiar system of U.S. aid for international development. During the past five years, the United States and many other donor nations pledged billions of dollars to Afghanistan, yet Afghans keep asking: "Where did the money go?" American taxpayers should be asking the same question.
The official answer is that donor funds are lost to Afghan corruption. But shady Afghans, accustomed to two-bit bribes, are learning about big bucks from the masters of the world.
Other answers appear in a fact-packed report issued in June 2005 by Action Aid, a widely respected nongovernmental organization headquartered in Johannesburg. The report studies development aid given by all countries worldwide and says that only part of it -- maybe 40 percent -- is real. The rest is phantom aid. That is, it never shows up in recipient countries at all.
Some of it doesn't even exist except as an accounting item, as when countries count debt relief or the construction costs of a fancy new embassy in the aid column. A lot of it never leaves home; paychecks for American "experts" under contract to USAID go directly to their U.S. banks. Much of the money is thrown away on "overpriced and ineffective technical assistance," such as those hot-shot American experts, the report said. And big chunks are tied to the donor, which means that the recipient is obliged to use the money to buy products from the donor country, even when -- especially when -- the same goods are available cheaper at home.
To no one's surprise, the United States easily outstrips other nations at most of these scams, making it second only to France as the world's biggest purveyor of phantom aid. Fully 47 percent of U.S. development aid is lavished on overpriced technical assistance. By comparison, only 4 percent of Sweden's aid budget goes to technical assistance, while Luxembourg and Ireland lay out only 2 percent.'
The official answer is that donor funds are lost to Afghan corruption. But shady Afghans, accustomed to two-bit bribes, are learning about big bucks from the masters of the world.
Other answers appear in a fact-packed report issued in June 2005 by Action Aid, a widely respected nongovernmental organization headquartered in Johannesburg. The report studies development aid given by all countries worldwide and says that only part of it -- maybe 40 percent -- is real. The rest is phantom aid. That is, it never shows up in recipient countries at all.
Some of it doesn't even exist except as an accounting item, as when countries count debt relief or the construction costs of a fancy new embassy in the aid column. A lot of it never leaves home; paychecks for American "experts" under contract to USAID go directly to their U.S. banks. Much of the money is thrown away on "overpriced and ineffective technical assistance," such as those hot-shot American experts, the report said. And big chunks are tied to the donor, which means that the recipient is obliged to use the money to buy products from the donor country, even when -- especially when -- the same goods are available cheaper at home.
To no one's surprise, the United States easily outstrips other nations at most of these scams, making it second only to France as the world's biggest purveyor of phantom aid. Fully 47 percent of U.S. development aid is lavished on overpriced technical assistance. By comparison, only 4 percent of Sweden's aid budget goes to technical assistance, while Luxembourg and Ireland lay out only 2 percent.'
Lees verder: http://www.rawa.org/rebuild3.htm
Ook een aanzienlijk deel van het Nederlandse belastingeld, rond een half miljard euro, dat naar Afghanistan gaat, verdwijnt in de zakken van corrupte Afghaanse warlords en heroinehandelaren. En dat allemaal in het kader van de democratisering van het land, althans, zo verklaart de voormalige wethouder van Borculo, minister van Defensie Henk Kamp.
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