Let me start with the first questions, which touch upon corruption, accountability, the Afghan channels, and the political process, if I'm not mistaken.
We do have a problem, as I said, with corruption, as many countries around the world do. Afghanistan, of course, is no exception. Our concerns mostly are, and should be, to tackle corruption at the highest levels of government--people with influence and authority who are abusing the system for personal gain or profit, or from whatever motivation they have.
We have put together, with the leadership of the Afghan Supreme Court--which has been reformed in the past year and is led by a very renowned and credible Afghan scholar and judge--a strategy to combat corruption. There are various institutions within Afghanistan that are in charge of fighting corruption; we in the government, of course, and at the behest of the President himself, are taking this very seriously.
I know this is an issue that appears quite often in the media, an issue that touches upon aid issues, aid money, and aid flowing to Afghanistan, but I can assure you of one thing: to a very large extent--70% to 80%--the money your country and others are putting into Afghanistan and investing in Afghanistan goes outside of Afghan government channels. So if there is a problem, some of it exists outside of what the Afghan government controls. It goes through NGOs, multilaterals, even corporations, contractors, and advisors--people who are involved in one way or another. All should be accountable and made accountable. We have a role to play in Afghanistan to make them accountable, and I think the donors also have a role to play to make them accountable.
The rest of the money and the rest of the resources that go through the Afghan government are all strictly controlled, supervised, and overseen by the international community through the trust funds that have been established, whether it is the Afghanistan reconstruction trust fund--the largest channel and mechanism to which money flows--the law enforcement trust fund, or the counter narcotics trust fund. They are all under the supervision of the World Bank, the IMF, the Asian Development Bank, and so on. So the notion that your money ends up in Afghan government officials' pockets does not really translate into reality in Afghanistan. There are other types of resources that may end up in people's pockets, but I can assure you that there's no evidence so far that shows your taxpayers' money ends up in somebody's pocket or somebody's bank account somewhere.
That's one part of the issue.
I mentioned Afghan channels. They're Afghan channels, strict Afghan measures put together by the Afghan Ministry of Finance, that work hand in hand with the World Bank, the IMF, the ADB, and others--including your aid organizations and agencies and their representatives in Afghanistan--to make sure that resources are accounted for.
I would like now to turn to the second set of questions, which were about how I would characterize today's feelings in Afghanistan. I think the Afghan people--and I'm generalizing, of course--continue to remain hopeful and optimistic. They also continue to be concerned about, and frustrated by, a certain lack of progress in some areas or slow progress in other areas.
It's a mixed situation; the situation overall is seen as positive in some regards and not so positive in other regards, so the Afghans' feeling is a mixed feeling. One thing that has changed since you quoted me from the last time is that we have more concerns about the security challenges we face today than we did six months ago.
Yes, the Afghan people are worried and concerned and frustrated by institutional weaknesses, by capacity weaknesses, by corruption issues, by narcotics itself corrupting our systems, and by all of that; they are, but I think they also see Afghanistan in the larger context of a country that has made some progress in some areas over the last six years and needs to do some more.
They also do not blame any one party specifically for those areas that have not made enough progress. It's not just the Afghan government's fault, it's not just the donors' fault, it's not just those countries with troops on the ground that are at fault; if you look at the totality of this and put things into perspective, you see that there's enough to be shared by everyone, including multilateral organizations and NGOs.