Pentagon audit faults $10 billion Afghan aid effort

A Pentagon watchdog faulted the World Bank and Afghanistan’s government for failing to shield billions of dollars in aid from potential waste or misuse, saying that long-identified weaknesses remain in a program that provides 40 percent of nonmilitary expenditures in the country.

“The Afghan government is not meeting its responsibilities to account for how it uses ARTF funding and to safeguard the funds from risks of misuse, waste, and fraud,” according to the report on the Afghanistan Reconstruction Trust Fund by the Defense Department’s special inspector general. “The World Bank’s lack of transparency limits donors’ and the public’s knowledge about ARTF progress and results reported.”

The fund was established in 2002 to provide for the rebuilding of Afghanistan after the U.S. invasion in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Supported by 34 nations and administered by the World Bank, the fund is designed to bolster government and economic development programs and to protect civilian rights. Of the $10 billion contributed to the fund since 2002, the U.S. has provided more than $3 billion, making it the single largest donor.

The report by the watchdog, known as the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, is another sign of the troubles the U.S., its allies and President Ashraf Ghani’s government are having in improving governance while staving off advances by the Taliban and Islamic State.

About 60 people were killed and more than 120 were wounded in a bombing over the weekend at a voter registration center in Kabul. Islamic State claimed responsibility for the suicide attack.

Afghanistan’s central government has been losing control of swaths of territory to Taliban and other forces for years. According to the Pentagon, as of October 2017, about 56 percent of Afghanistan’s population lived in areas under government control, with 14 percent controlled by insurgents and the remaining 30 percent in contested areas.

A January report by the Pentagon watchdog, known as SIGAR, said that despite $8.7 billion spent on counter-narcotics efforts in Afghanistan, opium production was up 87 percent in the first 11 months of 2017 from the same period a year earlier, an all-time record.

President Donald Trump agreed last year to a Pentagon request to send 4,000 additional U.S. troops, including special forces, to Afghanistan. He also gave commanders in the field more authority to strike the Taliban as well as Islamic State and al-Qaida terrorists. But those efforts don’t appear to have turned the tide against the insurgents in what has become the longest war in U.S. history.

The World Bank said in a statement on its website Wednesday that it is working with the Afghan government to strengthen the program.