US lawmaker blocks Afghan aid

US lawmaker blocks Afghan aid

A senior US Republican senator has blocked a 75-million-dollar American aid to Afghanistan pending assurances by the White House that the regular CIA cash payments to the Afghan government is not fueling the rampant corruption in the country.

Tennessee Senator Bob Corker, the top Republican member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee announced on Monday that he was putting a hold on the US aid until the Obama administration provides “sufficient assurances” that the “bags of cash” secretly, though admittedly, delivered to Afghan President Hamid Karzai by CIA operatives “were not fueling the corruption that pervades the Afghan government,” The New York Times reports Tuesday.

“In recent months, I have repeatedly communicated directly to President Obama my concerns regarding alleged cash payments by the US government to President Karzai of Afghanistan,” Corker stated in a letter announcing the aid freeze. “Specifically, I highlighted the incoherence of a policy that at once seeks to root out corruption and establish the rule of law, while at the same time funneling secret cash payments to the president.”

One Afghan official, the report says, has described the cash delivered by CIA agents to the presidential palace as “ghost money,” underlining that the spy agency has delivered “tens of millions of dollars worth of secret cash payments” to President Karzai’s office over the years, citing Afghan and American officials.

According to the daily, the USD75 million being withheld by Senator Corker was “intended to help Afghanistan organize elections” and is considered a tiny sum compared to the billions of dollars in development and military aid annually provided to Afghanistan as part of the US-led occupation of the war-torn country.

However, it notes, the aid cutoff marks “a rare moment of concrete Congressional pushback” on the Obama administration’s Afghan strategy.

“I have repeatedly requested briefings and additional information on the nature and effect of this policy, classified and unclassified, as appropriate. The administration’s lack of any response to these requests, its apparent decision to flout the Foreign Relations Committee’s oversight, and its inability (or unwillingness) to explain such a policy is unacceptable,” Senator Corker further explained in his letter to the White House.

“As a consequence,” he added, “I have determined that the further commitment of taxpayer funds at this time toward such an incoherent governance strategy would not be in our national interest.”

The White House, according to the report, has so far refused to explain the secret CIA payments.

The US National Security Council spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden, however, said on Monday that the White House had been in “close touch” with Senator Corker’s staff since he first demanded an explanation of the payments in early May, without elaborating.

This while the CIA payments have faced sharp criticism by many Afghan, American and European officials since they were first reported by The New York Times in April and following Karzai’s confirmation that the secret payments continued.

These officials say in a bid to maintain influence over President Karzai’s inner circle and “stabilize” the Afghan government, the CIA has for more than a decade financed a “slush fund used to pay off warlords, politicians, lawmakers and other powerful Afghans” upon whom Karzai depends for support, the report adds.

It further cites the officials as underlining that “some of those being paid have ties to the Taliban… others are involved in opium trafficking, but… the mere existence of the slush fund effectively undercuts a pillar of the American war strategy: the building of a clean and credible Afghan government.”

The US-led invasion of Afghanistan began in 2001 under the pretext of ousting the then-Taliban regime and rooting out terrorism, insecurity and narcotics production and trade, among other things. However, more than 11 years later, terrorism, insecurity and drug trade, in addition to mass displacement of the civilian population has drastically surged in the war-torn nation.