Fraud poses aid dilema

LAST week’s revelations that British aid to Afghanistan may be disappearing into the back pockets of fixers and mid-level bureaucrats is more proof, if any were needed, that our troops are fighting a war on two fronts.

British forces in Afghanistan British forces in Afghanistan []

A report by the Independent Commission for Aid Impact (ICAI) raised serious concerns about the Department for International Development’s inability to ensure that almost £500million of British taxpayers’ money, targeted over the next three years towards improving schooling and healthcare for Afghan citizens, does not end up lining the pockets of middlemen or, worse still, the Taliban.

There is no doubt that British troops in Helmand Province are seeing success. Despite the death last week of Captain Rupert Bowers, killed while leading an Afghan National Army patrol, and those of six soldiers a fortnight ago, death rates have dropped to 46 in the past 12 months, compared with 108 in 2009. However removing the Taliban’s stranglehold has always been just half of the equation. Even the rawest British private will tell you it’s not about the body count, British or Taliban. Success will come only when there is enough stability for people to reopen markets and for businesses to thrive without fear of attack or recrimination.

Yes, the ground war is being won steadily, albeit at a cost of 405 soldiers killed and more than 5,000 maimed, but there is a second front and it remains to be seen whether this will bring the same levels of success. It is a front that demoralises every commanding officer who finds himself in the grim position of writing a letter of condolence to the family of a soldier who died for his country . It is the front of resolve.

Georges Clemenceau, the journalist turned politician who led France through its Great War ordeal against Germany, said that war was too important to be left to generals but it is not our generals who declared a timetable for withdrawal, due to begin in 18 months and gleefully emphasised by George Osborne last week for the £2.4billion a year it will save taxpayers. While it may be good for the politicians, one former infantry officer likened this deadline to telling Hitler in 1941 that the ­Allies would have just two years of fight left in them, before packing up their tents and going home.

It is not our generals who urged withdrawal to be accelerated, while declaring that all Nato troops should cease to enter rural villages, the core of hearts and minds territory, to languish instead in their bases after the massacre of 16 Afghan civilians by a US Staff Sergeant. Afghan President ­Hamid Karzai, Nato’s tenuous best hope at national unity, subsequently suggested his comment, “Afghan forces have the ability to keep the security in rural areas and in villages on their own”, had been “misinterpreted”.

It is not our generals who instil so little trust that they cannot be armed with Russian-made AK-47 rifles for fear that they will sell the ammunition to similarly armed Taliban, as happened when Afghan National Army units were issued with M16s. Finally, it is not our generals who are accused of having so little control over their financial mechanisms that they cannot guarantee the £178million a year earmarked to improve “governance and security, education, wealth creation and humanitarian assistance” for one of the world’s poorest nations is not devoured by endemic corruption.

In its report ICAI gave the Afghanistan aid programme a damning amber-red mark, signifying that the scheme needs “significant improvements” to ensure aid reaches its intended beneficiaries. While International Development Secretary Andrew Mitchell said ICAI could find “no evidence of leakage of Department for International Development funds,” such a statement holds little water. DFID’s financial management, said the report, is just “not proactive enough in detecting fraud and corruption”.

However, without the £2billion a year being ploughed into Afghanistan by Western allies the nation would, said former British Ambassador Sir William Patey, “descend into chaos”. This money will achieve nothing unless it all goes to the projects it is intended to fund. Yet last week Sir William claimed Afghan corruption is so rife that, if it isn’t tackled properly, there would be a “very strong ­argument that says you would be throwing good money after bad”.

Without the stability this aid gives, our troops may as well be parting the sands with their hands, to watch it settle back again when they are gone.

If that happens, they won’t be gone for long.

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