Where does the aid go?

There is a striking juxtaposition of two news stories today. First we have the ‘news’ that some Western aid to Afghanistan has been diverted out of the country:

“The massive cash flown out of Afghanistan includes some diverted Western aid, according to preliminary evidence gathered by Afghan and U.S. investigators. … The raid also collected documents that link prominent Afghan businessmen and politicians, including relatives of President Hamid Karzai, in the movement of some USD3.65 billion flown out of the Asian nation annually. While some of the money came from legitimate businesses, some was sourced from diverted Western aid and logistics money, opium profits, and Taliban funds, according to U.S. and Afghan investigators. … U.S. Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan Richard Holbrooke earlier said the billions of dollars in cash flown out of Afghanistan does not include U.S. aid money. ‘We’re not missing money,’ the U.S. special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan said July 28 at a hearing of the House appropriations subcommittee on state and foreign operations.”

Second, the UK’s Department of Communities and Local Government today became the first government department to release the details of all its procurement spending, by publishing all expenditure with suppliers exceeding £500 for the last financial year. It will be interesting to see what people do with this data. The Guardian newspaper is putting together a visualisation.

The link between these two stories should be obvious.

If aid donors published the details of all their aid spending, as the cheques are written or the cash handed over, it would be much harder for that aid to be diverted. People in Afghanistan (and in other countries that receive aid) would know who the money was going to, and what to expect, and they would be able to kick up a fuss if it did not arrive.

The publication of its spending data by the Department of Communities and Local Government demonstrates that this information can be published: government agencies do generally have a computerised record of who they have given the money to. There is no reason for aid agencies to keep this information private, and every reason to make it public.

In the meantime, how is Richard Holbrooke so sure that none of the US aid money was diverted; and, if it wasn’t US aid, whose aid was it?