War profiteering come first.
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — U.S. spending on aid work in Afghanistan is only a fraction of what the American military spends, and too much of the aid money pays the high salaries of expatriate employees, an international aid agency said Tuesday.
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Though the government aid arm U.S. Agency for International Development has spent more than $4.4 billion in Afghanistan since 2002, the British-based aid agency Oxfam said that figure is dwarfed by U.S. military spending here — some $35 billion in 2007 alone.
“As in Iraq, too much aid is absorbed by profits of companies and subcontractors, on non-Afghan resources and on high expatriate salaries and living costs,” said the report, which was prepared for a British parliament committee. “Each full-time expatriate consultant costs up to half a million dollars a year.”
The U.S. Embassy in Kabul said it couldn’t immediately comment.
The report said “urgent action” is needed to avert humanitarian disaster and that millions of rural Afghans face “severe hardship comparable with sub-Saharan Africa.”
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“Some two-thirds of U.S. foreign assistance bypasses the Afghan government that officials say they want to strengthen,” Oxfam said.