In Afghanistan, not only the foreign military failed, but also the development workers.

The US alone has poured $ 144 billion into military aid and reconstruction over the past 19 years.

Around 60 percent was invested in military security, but 25 percent were intended to develop government institutions and keep them running, the rest was spent on humanitarian aid and civil projects.

This is evident from a recent analysis by the Congress Scientific Service.

The Pentagon adds the expenditures for the armed forces operations and comes to 825 billion dollars.

Winand von Petersdorff-Campen

Business correspondent in Washington.

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And the yield? "After decades of war, Afghanistan is moving towards a safer, more stable and more prosperous future," says the country report by the American development agency US Aid, which was updated in April and was overtaken by developments so quickly that the ministerial officials couldn't keep up .

It had long been clear that the international aid payments often did not reach the desired goal.

Not only did they fail to create capable armed forces, they also failed to build a robust economy.

In its country report, the World Bank itself analyzes that the high growth rates between 2003 and 2012 of more than 9 percent on an annual average, in addition to the successes in agriculture, were primarily due to the immense development aid itself, which financed a booming service sector.

Criticism from Transparency International

Since 2015, the annual growth rate has only been 2.5 percent. Because the population grew roughly just as quickly, the bottom line is that economic stagnation for every individual is in one of the poorest countries in the world. The World Bank names the decline in aid and the reduction in troop contingents as factors. The service sector collapsed when development workers partially withdrew, leaving behind the realization that the flowering was unsustainable.

Development aid workers have even made the situation worse: the aid programs to stabilize and democratize the country were highly fragmented, uncoordinated and poorly executed, according to a 2019 analysis by Transparency International. This is the cloaked language for the phenomenon that many financiers enriched warlords and their clans in order to achieve their goals.

This was not the only form of misappropriation: Last year, three economists examined in an article on the World Bank noticeable increases in accounts in tax havens held by citizens and societies from desperately poor countries, whenever the World Bank had just transferred money. One correlation was particularly striking: the greater the dependency on development aid, the faster the accounts grow. The researchers determined a seepage rate of 7.5 percent for 22 countries examined. For every $ 100 development aid, $ 7 and $ 50 cents disappear in tax havens. In the “dependent on aid” category, Afghanistan is right at the top.

One could argue that 7.5 percent is less explosive than expected. But, study co-author Jørgen Juel Andersen from BI Norwegian Business School makes it clear: Hiding money in a tax haven account is only one and even quite primitive method. There are alternatives: The researchers have also found that whenever money flows from the World Bank, new mailbox companies are set up in tax havens, whose management staff are connected to developing countries.

The World Bank has since announced that it is pausing its payments until it has a clearer picture of the plans of the Taliban, who now rule the country. Since 2002, the development agency has devoted 5.3 billion dollars to Afghanistan, and it also manages the Afghanistan Reconstruction Trust Fund with almost 13 billion dollars, of which Germany is the main donor. Non-governmental organizations that cooperate with the World Bank are still trying to provide humanitarian aid in the country.

The International Monetary Fund IMF has its own problems. A recent review shows that his loans are less likely to be diverted: presumably because they end up directly with the central bank and are specifically linked to macroeconomic goals, suspects IMF researcher Shekhar Shankar Aiyar. But the fund has now frozen around $ 400 million that Afghanistan is entitled to in the form of special drawing rights. The special drawing rights had been increased to make it easier for particularly poor countries to fight the pandemic crisis. Conservative politicians in America had always resisted increasing special drawing rights on the grounds that they would also benefit rogue states. Now the Taliban can hope for the funds as soon as they are recognized as a government.