Sunday, February 23, 2014

SIGAR Warns About Corruption as Drawdown Looms

The Special Inspector General for Reconstruction in Afghanistan (SIGAR) is warning the U.S. public and members of Congress that a good portion of the $5 billion plus we will likely send to Afghanistan each year for the next few years may go to waste. Currently the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) and United States Agency for International Development (USAID) have inadequate safeguards to ensure the money is used for the designated purpose. As there will be less and less troops on the ground (as of February 2014 there are 32,000) as time goes on it will become harder and harder to provide the proper oversight needed to inspect development projects and place advisers in the proper places to ensure money is used properly. Compounding this problem of inability to provide oversight (because bad security prevents observers to go out to over 80% of the country side) is the immense corruption found within the highest reaches of the Afghan government to include the current president - Hamid Karzai. Read more in "As Afghanistan Drawdown Looms, Inspector General Warns of Graft", The Huffington Post, February 18, 2014.

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