As
the debate over the road ahead in Afghanistan heats up in Congress, Democrats
are using the power of the purse to seek broad changes in the administration's
policy and express their unhappiness with the Afghan government led by
President Hamid Karzai.
In
the latest move, a leading House appropriator promised Monday to remove all the
Afghanistan foreign operations and aid money from next year's funding unless
she can be assured none of the funds are being wasted due to corruption in the
Afghanistan government.
"I
do not intend to appropriate one more dime for assistance to Afghanistan until
I have confidence that U.S. taxpayer money is not being abused to line the
pockets of corrupt Afghan government officials, drug lords, and terrorists," foreign
ops subcommittee chairwoman Nita Lowey,
D-NY, said. "Furthermore, the government of Afghanistan must demonstrate that
corruption is being aggressively investigated and prosecuted."
Her
subcommittee will mark up the fiscal 2011 state and foreign ops appropriations
bill Wednesday. When they do, billions of dollars the president requested for
all sorts of non-military work in Afghanistan will not be in the bill.
A
spokesperson for Lowey said she was responding, in part, to two articles
published Monday that described some of the abuses of U.S. taxpayer funds going
to Afghanistan. The Wall Street Journal reported
that more than $3 billion of cash has been flown out of the Kabul airport over
the last three years, packed in suitcases, and a joint U.S.-Afghan
investigation is underway. The Washington
PostreportedMonday that Karzai is protecting high-level
political officials from scrutiny related to the missing funds.
Lowey's
spokesman told The Cable that the
largest pots of money to be affected are about $3.3 billion in economic support
funds and about $450 million requested for anti-narcotics and law enforcement
aid to Afghanistan. Other accounts to be excluded include global health money,
anti-terrorism funds, and military training funds for Afghanistan army
officers. Humanitarian aid would not be affected.
Lowey
also tied the issue to the still struggling U.S. economy, a theme that House
Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-MD,
focused on in a separate speech today. Democrats in Congress are preparing to
go home to their districts after this week for a July 4 recess that will kick
off the congressional campaign season. Accordingly, they are amplifying their rhetoric
about deficit spending and expressing their unhappiness with the progress of
the war in Afghanistan.
"Too
many Americans are suffering in this economy for us to put their hard-earned
tax dollars into the hands of criminals overseas," Lowey said.
It's
unclear exactly how Lowey's bill will be treated after it passes out of her
committee. There is not much chance the Congress will pass a full slate of
funding bills this year at all. Hill sources said that the current thinking is
to pass one bill that will keep the government running until after the
elections, called a continuing resolution. In past years, those catch-all
spending bills often have had big changes from what the committees put forth,
so the money could be added back later on.
It's
also unclear exactly how the Afghan government, much less the Obama
administration, could actually assure Lowey that the billions of dollars being
sent to Afghanistan are not being siphoned off by corrupt officials for illicit
purposes.
The
office of Kay Granger, R-TX, the
ranking Republican on Lowey's committee, did not immediately respond to requests
for comment.
UPDATE: Granger issued this statement late Monday afternoon:
"I share similar concerns with Chairwoman Nita Lowey about
today's press reports alleging the shipment of billions of dollars in donor
funds out of Afghanistan. However, I cannot support cancelling all FY2011
Afghanistan funding for the State Department and USAID until all the facts are
clear and we know the impact this could have on our troops on the ground. When
General Petraeus helped craft the current Afghan strategy last year it was not
exclusively a military strategy - the State Department and USAID were intended
to be key partners in the overall effort."
US mollycoddles Pakistan at the expense of Afghanistan and so poor Karzai left with no choice but to make deal with the devil which is Pakistan-supported Taliban led by Mullah Omar and Haqqani.
After having denied existence of Mullah Omar’s QST umpteen times, now Pakistan suddenly finds way to bring about reconciliation between QST and Afghan government. The most breath-taking part of this is that US is NOT holding Pakistan responsible for sheltering, protecting and supporting Haqqani’s HQN network and Mullah Omar’s QST network all these years while those networks have been causing daily deaths of US/NATO soldiers ever since 2002!
Defense Secretary Robert Gates justified Pakistan’s terrorist connections, alluding to a “deficit of trust” between Washington, DC and Islamabad. Mr Gates also said that there was “some justification” for Pakistan's concerns about past American policies. Gen David Patraeus, rushed in with an apologia for his Pakistani friends, by claiming that while Faisal was inspired by militants in Pakistan, he did not necessarily have contacts with the militants which is proven to be wrong. Both Adm Mike Mullen and Gen Patraeus fancy themselves to be “soldier statesmen” a la Gen Dwight Eisenhower. Adm Mullen has visited Pakistan 15 times and Gen Patraeus no less frequently. Both evidently have high opinions of their abilities to persuade Gen Ashfaq Parvez Kayani to crack down on the Haqqani network in North Waziristan and the Taliban’s Mullah Omar-led Quetta Shura.
All American officers in southern Afghanistan know that they can not prevail in the ongoing military operations, unless Taliban strongholds across the Durand Line in North Waziristan and Baluchistan are neutralized. Adm Mullen and Gen Patraeus evidently do not want to acknowledge that hard options have to be considered if their soldiers are not to die at the hands of radicals, armed and trained across the Durand Line. This is where rubber meets the road for the famed General.
According to Afghan Taliban commanders’ interviews with Matt Waldman, a Harvard Professor, the Pakistani ISI orchestrates, sustains and strongly influences the Taliban insurgency movement. The Afghan Taliban commanders also say that ISI gives sanctuary to both Taliban and Haqqani groups, and provides huge
support in terms of training, funding, munitions, and supplies. In the words of these Afghan Taliban commanders, this is ‘as clear as the sun in the sky’.
Pakistani government issued its usual denials just as it had denied umpteen times the existence of Mullah Mohammed Omar’s ‘Quetta Shura Taliban (QST)’ in the provincial capital Quetta of Baluchistan. But General Stanley McChrystal confirmed the existence of QST in his report to President Obama in August, 2009 as follows: ‘Quetta Shura Taliban (QST) based in Quetta , the provincial capital of Baluchistan, is the No. 1 threat to US/NATO mission in Afghanistan . At the operational level, the Quetta Shura conducts a formal campaign review each winter, after which Mullah Mohammed Omar (Afghan Taliban Chief) announces his guidance and intent for the coming year‘.
Unless and until Gates, Mullen and Petraeus trio is willing to accept that Pakistan is a ‘problem’ rather than a ‘solution’, US Afghan mission will continue to suffer.
Long story short, Congresswoman Lowey is taking a critical decision based on very bad data. The WSJ story that sparked this doesn't add up. There is no possible way that $3b a year is being skimmed off by corruption. No where near that amount of foreign money even enters the Afghan economy. Only 38% of aid money is spent locally, and a tiny fraction of military spending. The Afghans simply don't have access to the billions and billions being spent ON Afghanistan (if not IN Afghanistan).
The numbers are here: http://buildingmarkets.org/blogs/blog/2010/06/28/wall-street-journal-gets-it-wrong/
Josh Rogin reports on national security and foreign policy from the Pentagon to Foggy Bottom, the White House to Embassy Row, for The Cable.
Read More
(2)
HIDE COMMENTS LOGIN OR REGISTER REPORT ABUSE