Afghanistan Aid And Regional Blowback – OpEd
The cold vengeance of the No Tax Dollars for Terrorists Act of the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee is aimed at an issue that is already known to all in the aid fraternity that the money that is supposed to be given to needy populations is being skimmed, taxed, diverted or stolen out right in those locations where the local ruling regime is a legitimate armed group. The committee is framed in a simple way and the bill itself is supposed to avoid even indirect support of the terrorist groups in Afghanistan during Taliban reign.
Logically speaking, it is hard to disagree with it. Since the Taliban took over in August 2021, Afghanistan has been left at the mercy of the humanitarian deluge, while permits, checkpoints, custom, contracting, and access to communities remain in the hands of the same authorities that control the land. That is a perfect rent seeking arrangement. By allowing the supply chains of cash or funds to pass through without proper protection when the donors initiate the same, they create predictable leakage points. The result is a strategic and moral paradox, relief is being funded with taxpayers, and military players are provided with income, power, and support.
The bill also fits another political fact in Washington, which is wider. Selling the Afghanistan file as nation building is no longer the case but it is being promoted as a risk management case. The question that congress is asking which is not overt but lurks behind it is how can we continue to provide support to a regime that is not recognized by the US and a regime that the UN continues to discuss as one capable of providing a free hand to the different terrorist groups. The committee move and the bill being placed under the legislative calendar in the senate is an indicator that oversight is now turning out to be the price of doing business in any Afghanistan related assistance that requires the touch of the US money.
In this lies the worse part. There is no guarantee that hard sounding laws will provide a cleaning. Afghanistan is one of the hardest places in the world where it is possible to conduct audited, end-to-end humanitarian pipelines and the limitations are not conceptualized. Access can be cut overnight. Coercion of local partners is possible. The database of beneficiaries can be compromised. Taxation may be administered at exchange. Even whereby the agencies are trying to avoid the de facto authorities, the authorities still occupy the choke points that are counted. That is why no indirect benefit is a successful slogan and inhumane business requirement.
This has been driven to the point by reports and watchdog warnings by the US. Sigar has on numerous occasions declared that there are invariably weak areas in supervision since the downfall of Kabul, including the loss of sight that took place after the downfall of the previous Afghan government and the limitations this imposed on scrutinizing and keeping track. The reason behind this is that in those situations that you are unable to check in on your own you have found yourself relying on the use of paper compliance and self-reporting that is the genesis of the fraud. And on top of watchdog in US, UN monitoring evaluations have continued to be a point of concern on the availability of terrorists and enabling environment in Afghanistan.
Indicators of corruption also support the same. The Corruption Perceptions Index of Transparency International indicates that Afghanistan is ranked as the 169th out of the 182 countries and the score of the country is very low which can be considered as the sign of poor institutions and high-perceived corruption in the public sector. Has no proven aid diversion, but as a policy consideration is a red flag on pole, high corruption environments need high friction, high verification and tight controls that is not that it needs low ones.
The element of regional security does not represent window dressing, but it is the strategic core. Pakistan has been accusing anti Pakistan militant groups which have been operating on the Afghan soil and chiefly, Tehreek e Taliban Pakistan in the UN. Recent UN reports also raised the issue once again and the terrorist threat environment was described as a significant problem with Pakistan referring to cross border attacks and rising violence. As soon as politicians are informed that the same ecosystem is providing food to the people who are assaulting their partners and causing instability, they will want restrictions every time, even though restrictions make the process of humanitarian delivery even more expensive.
However, the Act should not be featured as an ethical win-win. Without the US and allies being correct on squashing the legitimate aid, common Afghans will be first to suffer. Meals were not missed by the Taliban. Children districts of the affected hit areas were faced by the drought. Whether or not to prevent diversion is not a policy issue, but whether the protective measures can be designed so that they would only protect the leakage as opposed to the pipeline. That is not theoretical mechanisms, but prohibitions.
One of the practical solutions seems to be as follows. Limit financial controls and transparency requirements but also invest in models of delivery that reduce capture, e.g., more in kind delivery where available, much stronger vetting of vendors, electronic payments and sound identity checks when the situation is admissible, external monitoring, which is independent and properly so, and swift responses to indications of diversion. It also suggests that it is honest regarding trade-offs, that one cannot be as regimented, yet loose systems do exist.
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