Brendan Nicholson; 14/10/09
An extraordinary 40 per cent of the billions of dollars in aid destined for Afghanistan never reaches the country, a top international specialist on the region has warned. Anthony Cordesman, from the US Centre for Strategic and International Studies, said in Canberra yesterday that the massive waste of international aid was one of the great failures of the campaign to win the war in Afghanistan. The United Nations was presiding over an unco-ordinated and unmanaged mess, said Dr Cordesman, who has advised the Obama Administration and the US military extensively on Afghanistan and Pakistan as they plan a new strategy to defeat the insurgency. ”This is a major problem,” he said.In a speech to the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, Dr Cordesman said international aid efforts needed to be refocused on the needs of Afghan people and made specific to individual communities.
See: http://www.theage.com.au/world/40-of-afghan-aid-never-arrives-20091013-gvnk.html
Tags: Afghanistan, Aid, UN, USA