The US ambassador to Afghanistan Johan Bass says international community has lost trust in Afghan government’s fight against corruption.
Speaking at a conference on fight against corruption at the Presidential Palace in Kabul, Bass said Afghanistan has lost its credence with the donor community due to widespread embezzlement.
He said peace with Taliban would have some positive fallout for Afghanistan, but donor countries would not help post-peace Afghanistan if the problem of corruption was not fundamentally tackled.
“Even now the donor countries don’t provide aid to Afghanistan because of the corruption. They believe their aid money is pocketed by specific individuals.”
Bass said corruption had badly affected Afghanistan’s trust internationally, reiterating that only Afghans can root out the menace.
He says the US stands shoulder to shoulder with Afghans in their fight against corruption, but Afghanistan still lacks strong institutions to wage real and fundamental fight against graft.
“Corruption is the biggest barrier on Afghanistan’s way towards prosperity and development, something that requires comprehensive and coordinated efforts to be wiped out,” said the ambassador.
However, President Ashraf Ghani said his government had achievements in fight against corruption in the past five years, but acknowledged that there were still some problems in the struggle.
To effectively deal with the embezzlement, President Ghani said joint work and cooperation between the relevant organizations were required.
“Cooperation among the institutions is still weak. Job Interference is still a major problem in the implementation,” he said.
He also dubbed interference of irresponsible individuals in revenue collection and problems in project management as other hinders in fight against corruption.
The president also said that his government met 82 indicators among 102 indicators given by SIGAR to Afghan government for its anti-corruption efforts.
