![]() This includes the Commanders Emergency Response Programme - where senior officers in the field have access to cash for tactical spending - and the Provincial Reconstruction Funds, which "aims to win ‘hearts and minds’,” said Oxfam’s Jackson. Over $29 billion (77 percent of the total disbursed aid) was directly spent by donors with little or no government input more than $15 of the $29 billion was disbursed directly by foreign military channels, according to the DFR. President Hamid Karzai’s government has been pilloried over allegations of endemic corruption, ineptitude and the mismanagement of aid, but it disbursed only 23 percent of foreign grants (about $8 billion). Low aid absorption capacity has also been cited as a reason why more aid has not reached the vulnerable in Afghanistan, experts say.īut the quality of aid is an important issue: “The priority is not necessarily on increasing the volume of aid, but on making sure it is spent effectively and has a positive outcome for Afghans,” Ashley Jackson, Oxfam’s head of policy and advocacy in Afghanistan, told IRIN. Over the past five years per capita donor aid has been $1,241 - far less than the amount spent in Iraq and Bosnia, according to the DFR, despite Afghanistan having some of the worst poverty and vulnerability indicators in the world. Over 2,400 civilian deaths in 2009 - UNAMA Warning over heightened risk to NGO staff in 2010Ĭould foreign troop surge exacerbate vulnerability? The USA has been the single largest donor to Afghanistan over the past eight years, disbursing US$23.417 billion.ĭip in civilian deaths in first two months of 2010 Now, with the release of the first Donor Financial Review (DFR) by the Ministry of Finance, some basic facts and figures are finally available.ĭonors spent US$36 billion in Afghanistan in 2001-2009 out of a total of $62 billion pledged in grants and loans, according to the DFR.Īmong the dozens of donors, Sweden came out top in terms of covering the gap between commitment and action - translating 90 percent of its pledges into concrete funding, followed by the UK and the USA, while the Asian Development Bank ranked last at 60 percent. Afghanistan has been showered with foreign aid since the fall of the Taliban in 2001, but it has been an uphill battle for the government and its donor allies to prove it was all money well spent.Ĭritics contend there has been a lack of transparency and coordination and that much of the funding has been squandered through corruption, mismanagement and poor targeting: achievements the government likes to point to in health, education, governance, and communications, could have been achieved at a fraction of the cost, they say. ![]()
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