INDEPENDENT– The most extraordinary failure of the US-led
coalition in Afghanistan is that the expenditure of tens of billions of
dollars has had so little impact on the misery in which 30 million
Afghans live. As President Barack Obama prepares this week to present a
review of America’s strategy
in Afghanistan which is likely to focus on military progress, US
officials, Afghan administrators, businessmen and aid workers insist
that corruption is the greatest threat to the country’s future.
In a series of interviews, they paint a picture of a country where $52bn (£33bn) in US aid since 2001 has made almost no impression on devastating poverty made worse by spreading violence and an economy dislocated by war. That enormous aid budget, two-thirds for security and one-third for economic, social and political development, has made little impact on 9 million living in absolute poverty, and another 5 million trying to survive on $43 (£27) a month. The remainder of the population often barely scrapes a living, having to choose between buying wood to keep warm and buying food.
Afghans see a racketeering élite as the main beneficiaries of international support and few of them are optimistic about anything changing. “Things look all right to foreigners but in fact people are dying of starvation in Kabul,” says Abdul Qudus, a man in his forties with a deeply lined face, who sells second-hand clothes and shoes on a street corner in the capital. They are little more than rags, lying on display on the half-frozen mud.
Read full article about Afghanis dying of starvation.
Photo by flickr user AfghanistanMatters
© COPYRIGHT INDEPENDENT, 2010
