Confidential U.S. assessments show the Afghanistan government is not prepared to take over and govern when the United States withdraws its troops, the Washington Times reports.
According to the assessments, the billions of dollars spent on nation building have done little to create a sustainable civilian government in Afghanistan. U.S. Agency for International Development officials told the Washington Times that "risks of corruption and waste associated with trying to develop a government have long been known."
The documents focus specifically on seven Afghan government ministries overseeing the nation’s finance, mining, electric utilities, communications, education, health and agriculture.
USAID concluded outright that six of those ministries simply cannot be trusted to manage aid from U.S. taxpayers without a dangerous risk that the money will fall victim to fraud, waste, abuse or outright theft.
Only in one of the seven cases — the Afghan Ministry of Finance in March 2013 — did auditors conclude that the ministry’s systems were "adequate to properly manage and account for" money being channeled in from Washington.
But even with that conclusion, USAID auditors identified 26 risks for fraud and waste at the finance ministry. Three of the risks were deemed to be "high" and the rest were rated "critical," including the overarching danger of the Finance Ministry simply "not being able to fulfill its mandate and carry out its operation."