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US used Afghan aid money to buy off opposition, militia leaders: Activist

Saturday, 25 April 2015 4:18 AM [ Last Update: Saturday, 25 April 2015 8:04 AM ]

US financial aid to Afghans may have been diverted to channels for the so-called black operations, Rozoff said.

The United States may have used the money meant to be reconstruction aid in Afghanistan to “buy off” opposition and militia leaders, an anti-war activist in Chicago says.

Rick Rozoff, a member of Stop NATO International, made the remarks on Friday when asked about an internal report released Thursday which shows the Defense Department cannot explain what happened to $1.3 billion shipped to force commanders in Afghanistan from 2004 to 2014 for critical reconstruction projects.

The missing money, which was part of the somewhat small amount of Afghanistan spending, was routed directly to military officers in order to get around bureaucracy and speed up the construction of urgently needed roads, bridges, schools, hospitals, water treatment plants and other essential infrastructure in the war-torn country.

Rozoff said the basic questions which need to be answered are that who “misappropriated” the money and where the funds were “diverted”.

“It may have been diverted to channels for the so-called black operations, that is even meant to buy off perhaps the opposition leaders, the militia leaders or into special operations of some sort the US does not want to acknowledge it’s been conducting,” he told Press TV.

Elsewhere in his remarks, Rozoff said the US has done nothing for the Afghan people and that it misused Afghanistan as a war zone to train its forces to be used in other countries.

“The people of Afghanistan have no prospects of a peaceful and settled and prosperous existence, because what the US and its NATO allies have been interested in was conducting wars and training their respective military forces in a battle zone like Afghanistan for use elsewhere,” he opined.

“We’re beginning incidentally to see the fruits of that in conflicts such as that in Ukraine right now where the US and NATO have trained troops in various former Soviet Republics like Georgia and other nations who may very well enter the fray of this conflict in Ukraine [if it] continues much longer,” he noted.

“But in terms of Afghanistan, once again, we see the lack of concern for the economic and social and other human aspects of the Afghan situation and the US insisting on a military solution to what was a never military issue,” Rozoff stated.

AT/GJH

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