U.S. Winds Down Afghanistan Aid Program

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Wall Street Journal, 10 October 2012
The closure of already five of over two dozen NATO PRTs ‘is effectively turning off the money flow to Afghanistan’s provinces’, the Journal reports. Of the once millions-strong Commander’s Emergency Response Program funds for PRT commanders (the Nangarhar PRT spent $24 million on projects in the province in 2010) ‘has all but dried up’; the Nangarhar PRT now oversees around half a dozen projects with a total budget of $750,000.The team still has ‘bulk CERP’ available, ‘capped at $5,000 per project’. In Laghman, the closure has ‘badly affected’ the local economy, a spokesman for the governor says: ‘There are no more projects’. Provincial governments are now to turn to the Afghan government for project money.