UK aid effort in Afghanistan "dysfunctional"

By Luke Baker

LONDON (Reuters) - Britain's aid efforts in Afghanistan are failing, undermining military gains and fuelling the Taliban insurgency, a think-tank with long experience in the country said on Wednesday.

The Senlis Council, an international policy group with offices across Afghanistan, said research in the country's violent southern provinces in recent weeks showed next to no impact from Britain's Department for International Development.

"DFID in Helmand is dysfunctional, totally dysfunctional. Basically it should be removed and its budget should go to the army, which might be better able to deliver assistance," Norine MacDonald, Senlis's president, told Reuters.

Senlis's outspoken comments come at a testing time for Britain, the United States and their NATO allies, with the seven-year struggle to bring security to Afghanistan under intense scrutiny and widely seen as falling backwards.

The Department for International Development (DFID), the government's foreign aid arm, has spent 490 million pounds ($980 mln) on Afghan reconstruction and development since 2001 and is budgeted to spend another $210 mln this year.

But Senlis, which has more than 50 employees conducting research in Afghanistan, said there was little evidence of aid and development projects working and said refugee camps that lacked aid were now hotbeds of Taliban recruitment.

"If DFID think they are making a difference in Lashkar Gah and other towns, they clearly haven't been out to take a look. I haven't seen any signs of DFID aid or development projects," MacDonald said, referring to the main city in Helmand province.

DFID dismissed the criticism, saying it had spent around $70 million in Helmand in the past two years, building roads and bridges, providing sanitation and wells, and supplying funds to boost small business development.