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Mother JonesAfter the legendary corruption of the Iraq occupation—private contractors fashioning spurs for their cowboy boots from stolen Iraqi gold, vanishing pallets of shrink-wrapped cash—you'd think the US government would be keeping an extra-close watch on the reconstruction effort in Afghanistan. But you'd be wrong. Who says so? The guy in charge of rooting out corruption. Even as the Obama administration steps up spending in Afghanistan, it's shortchanging the government auditors responsible for ensuring that taxpayer dollars don't wind up in the pockets of swindlers and opportunists.
Afghanistan already places fifth in Transparency International's annual ranking of the most corrupt nations in the world. The US plans to spend nearly $14 billion there over the next financial year on military operations and reconstruction projects, up from about $11 billion this year. Yet Arnold Fields, the official charged with keeping track of this money—as well as foreign investment in US-sponsored programs—says in an interview with Mother Jones that he lacks the tools for the job.
For several months after the creation of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction in July 2008, SIGAR was "just a couple of us," Fields says, until the agency belatedly received its first injection of funds. In March, when President Obama unveiled his new Afghanistan strategy, he promised "robust funding" for Fields' anti-corruption efforts. But Fields says his FY2010 budget of $23 million is still about $8 million short of what he needs. Instead of the 90 employees Fields asked for, SIGAR has 44. It has produced just one audit. By way of contrast, the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR) released more than a dozen audits in its first year.
Perhaps more so than Iraq, Afghanistan is an ideal destination for would-be war profiteers. As Fields told members of the House Armed Services Committee in March, "Iraq had much more upon which to build…We are really constructing as opposed to reconstructing in Afghanistan." At the time of the US invasion in 2003, Iraq boasted the world's third-largest oil reserves, a per-capita annual income of $4,000, an average life expectancy of 70 years, and 74 percent literacy. Afghanistan, by contrast, has no natural resources to speak of, per-capita annual income is just $800, life expectancy is a dismal 45 years, and only 28 percent of the population can read or write. It has precious few paved roads, no railways, and only four airports with runways suitable for large aircraft. Its mountainous, landlocked geography is a haven for insurgents. Moreover, whereas Iraq under Saddam Hussein possessed a corps of competent technocrats, Afghanistan's civil society has been decimated by more than 30 years of uninterrupted warfare. Much of the countryside is now under the sway of tribal warlords and devoted to harvesting opium, by far the country's most lucrative industry.
Corruption thrives in such conditions.
more:
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2009/07/afghanistan-oversight-awol
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