US aid package leaves Afghans feeling short-changed

Less than one percent of the money requested by US president George W Bush, in an overall funding request of US $ 87 billion to cover post-war activities in Iraq and Afghanistan, would go towards Afghan reconstruction, the representative of a leading NGO in the country said on Wednesday. "Actually, less than half of a percent, as much of this money will go to security priorities of training and supporting the ANA [Afghan National Army] and police," Paul Barker, country director for the US-based humanitarian organisation CARE International in Afghanistan, told IRIN from Kabul. A sum of just US$ 800 million has been earmarked for reconstruction in Afghanistan, forcing CARE to promptly issue a press statement, following the budget's announcement on Monday evening, suggesting that more priority appeared to be attached to Iraq - a country with at least some semblance of a physical infrastructure in place - than to Afghanistan. "The general feeling with this kind of allocation is that the ongoing effort in Afghanistan would need more; that this allocation is less than what is needed, especially in terms of the aid needed to sustain humanitarian efforts," Anna Elisabeth De Beer, the director of the Agency Coordinating Body for Afghan Relief (ACBAR), told IRIN from Kabul. All assistance for Afghan reconstruction and security was welcome, Barker said, but added that he was concerned that Afghanistan's needs were still under-subscribed, with few donors talking about serious multi-year commitments. "Afghanistan has very serious problems and its government is incapable of adequately dealing with them in the absence of much more serious multi-year commitment than has been shown to date," Barker stressed, adding that he looked at US $20 billion as a reasonable five year target for Afghanistan's reconstruction needs. "While there are serious concerns with capacity, there are also very significant and expensive needs which have not yet been seriously addressed or budgeted," he said, pointing to civil service reform and the costs of pensioning off redundant government employees as examples. "Providing a living wage and meaningful job descriptions to those that are required for a more lean and effective bureaucracy" was another step that needed to be taken, Barker maintained. The aid community was also very concerned about the deteriorating security situation which is increasingly targeting NGO and government employees, Barker said. "Finding the tone and the balance of a successful reconstruction agenda for Afghanistan remains a daunting challenge," he said. With the war-ravaged country struggling to rebuild after more than two decades of conflict, the World Bank and United Nations have estimated its reconstruction needs at between 13 billion and 19 billion US dollars. Finance Minister Ashraf Ghani has said Afghanistan needed 30 billion US dollars in aid and investment over five years to drag itself out of poverty and violence.