For over 10 years, U.S. government agencies have been attempting to establish the rule of law and a basic justice system in Afghanistan. But according to a newly released audit, the effort is an unaccountable, largely unsuccessful use of over $1 billion taxpayer dollars.
According to the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, the push through more than 60 different programs to establish rule of law in the country has been “impaired.”
Overall, SIGAR noticed four major problems with the current programs, which it detailed in a 52-page report. The agencies lack a clear strategy; they don’t keep good track of the money they’re spending; there’s almost no way to measure success; and the Afghanistan government doesn’t seem particularly interested.
The rule of law is generally considered to require accountability, lack of corruption, transparency, fundamental rights, civil and criminal justice, and a functioning government.
Though SIGAR recognizes the difficulty in “achieving ideal or perfect program performance measurement in Afghanistan” considering problems with “security, mobility, illiteracy, and other challenges,” it concludes that the level of unaccountability inherent in these programs is unacceptable to taxpayers and Afghanistan’s citizens, who continue to suffer without access to the most basic legal rights.
“In Afghanistan, a country plagued by decades of conflict, access to fair, efficient, and transparent justice is limited,” reads the report.
Just last week, when SIGAR tried to generate a map of USAID’s health clinics in Afghanistan, the majority of them were in the wrong place. One of the clinics, according to the data USAID reportedly gave to SIGAR, was in the Mediterranean Sea.
SIGAR also routinely publishes reports on facilities and programs that have been a waste of money, including a command and control facility at Camp Leatherneck in Afghanistan. According to SIGAR, the center is a $36 million waste that is unnecessary, unwanted, and unused.
(This post is from our blog: Unofficial Sources.)
Photo: Afghan moneychangers (Shah Marai/AFP/Getty)
The major USAID-funded rule of law implementers in Afghanistan are as follows:
– USAID AfPak team led for years by J. Alexander Their;
– Checchi & Co. Consulting, Inc. is the prime contractor and received USAID funding for TEN (10) years and counting…
– Management Systems International is the sub for Checchi, and it is the primary culprit in all the failures to establish rule of law in Afghanistan.
– The Asia Foundation tried but it had so many inappropriate personnel who tried to marginalize Afghans working hard to bring rule of law to their country.
One of Checchi’s rule of law team leaders was accused of bringing in Afghan street children into his guesthouse and allegedly plying them with alcohol to allegedly engage in lewd and lascivious behavior.
One of MSI’s senior accountants is alleged to have engaged in sexual harassment of an Afghan American female working on the project.
NATO / ISAF dedicated only one person to the entire rule of law effort for the country.
The Italians, Canadians, British, and others engaged in nasty and costly turf battles over who ‘owns’ the rule of law reform efforts in Afghanistan. This lead to complete and utter lack of program coordination.
The fault lies at the feet of USAID AfPak Team. Those folks are getting promotions and salaries bumps.
There is certainly something rotten going on.
Thank God for SIGAR and work towards accountability and transparency, because USAID has no idea what those concepts mean.
Testing updated comment section.
This is the first reply.
This is the second reply. Under a different article, I’ve seen replies on the first level under a comment sort newest to oldest, which would be a bug.
“[T]he Afghan government doesn’t seem to be particularly interested.” Wonder whether there’s any connection between the Afghan government insisting that persons held in their jails be actually charged with a crime or entitled to some kind of due process — which the US refused to permit — and the perception that maybe the Afghan government isn’t too impressed by US “efforts” to impose a “[US-dictated]rule of law” there.
“In Afghanistan, a country plagued by decades of conflict, access to fair, efficient, and transparent justice is limited,”
Let’s look in the mirror.
“BILLION OR TRILLION”?
Perhaps the expenditure is being evaluated according to the ostensible purpose rather than the actual purpose. We want to funnel money to various person in Afghanistan so that we can remain there doing things that we want to do there. If we pay off the right people, we’ll have a couple of influential “friends” who will see that our presence is in their interest, and they’ll help us do whatever we want to do there. So what is the money being spent on? Not the rule of law. But what?
The link to the report (www.sigar.mil) generates a security warning in Firefox. What is the problem with the certificate?
‘mission accomplished’… just ask the PNAC
Yeah I’d say we have a lot of work to do in our own nation with regard to our “system of justice” before we start attempting to create one from scratch for a country with a very different history/culture than ours. Assuming that’s possible which I don’t believe it is. We’ve done very little more than bringing misery and death to the people of Afghanistan, who oddly enough have been there for millennia prior to America ever existing. I’d think we’d have a little more humility in thinking we can “fix” or “create” anything that “works” for the Afghan people. Seems to me we should focus more on establishing trade relationships that work for them, paying reparations for all the damage we’ve caused them over the last couple of decades, and stick to getting our own house in order and let the Afghan people get on with their lives as best they can.
“The rule of law is generally considered to require accountability, lack of corruption, transparency, fundamental rights, civil and criminal justice, and a functioning government.”
(insert joke about practicing what we preach)