Karzai pleads for billions in new aid, promises to fight corruption

from the CBC

Canada, U.S. already committing extra money to Afghanistan

Afghanistan's president appealed for more than $50 billion in new aid for the country while attending an international donors conference Thursday in Paris, promising the money will be spent on reconstruction and not frittered away through corruption.

The appeal for new money was in a strategic development plan that Hamid Karzai presented to the conference, saying Afghanistan would achieve peace and stability by 2020 if it got the needed aid.

"Afghanistan needs large amounts of aid but precisely how aid is spent is just as important," Karzai said, referring to donors' worries about graft and thievery by government officials.

UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon also warned about the debilitating impact of corruption on reconstruction and development.

"Every act of corruption is a deliberate act by someone in a position of authority," he said in a speech at the Paris conference.

A recent report from an independent aid-monitoring group, Integrity Watch Afghanistan, said only 60 per cent of foreign help sent to Karzai's government since 2001 has reached the Afghan people.

Corruption was only partially to blame, the group found. International aid agency spending on bureaucracy and salaries soaked up a significant amount of money meant to create jobs, train police and build roads, said the group's report released Tuesday.
Karzai should fire corrupt officials: donors

CBC's David Common, covering the conference in Paris, said there are real concerns among donors about Afghan government corruption.

"Some donor governments have privately pleaded with Karzai to fire corrupt officials within his cabinet, including governors who run their provinces like personal fiefdoms."

There are also continuing concerns about the drug trade, with opium production at record levels in almost all the country's 29 provinces. Farmers say they're driven to grow poppies by poverty, and the failure to rebuild rural roads and infrastructure needed to produce other, legal crops.

Most Afghans still live in mud-brick homes, with fewer than 20 per cent having access to electricity, clean water or health services.
Poverty helps insurgency

Taliban insurgents use the country's continuing poverty and the seemingly slow pace of internationally assisted development to recruit fighters in desperately poor areas, observers say.

Canada has already announced a significant boost in its aid to Afghanistan over the next three years.

David Emmerson, acting foreign affairs minister representing Canada at the Paris conference, said the new Canadian money would include funding for a crucial hydro project in northern Kandahar province and a polio immunization drive for seven million children.