Former Afghan President Ashraf Ghani revealed that the previous government did not have precise figures on the number of police and security forces, schools, and teachers within the Ministry of Education until the very last moment of his tenure.
Ghani accused the United States and the United Nations of obstructing the digitalisation of government institutions and being principal contributors to corruption.
During the seventeenth instalment of his series of conversations with journalist Dawood Junbish about Afghanistan, Ghani stated that although the US allocated one billion dollars for computerising the security system, it remained paper-based until the end.
"Until the end, we didn’t know how many police officers were in the Ministry of Interior," the former president admitted.
Ghani highlighted widespread corruption within security institutions, noting, "Huge expenses were incurred, but the money went into the pockets of contractors from the Ministry of Defence and USAID."
He emphasised that American forces had annually promised to provide an accurate count of the forces, but this was never fulfilled until 2021.
Ghani also confirmed the existence of "ghost teachers" and "ghost schools," pointing out discrepancies between the number of employees and schools in the Ministry of Education and those receiving salaries.
The former president criticised the United Nations, alleging that the UN impeded the digitalisation of Afghanistan's elections. He claimed that in 2002, a proposal was made to the United Nations to conduct electronic elections, but the UN refused and insisted on traditional elections, leading to numerous issues.
Ghani argued that the ineffective preventive measures by the United Nations resulted in the political crises following the 2009 elections. He mentioned that he had planned to expel the United Nations from Afghanistan, but the UN incited warlords and portrayed him as an opponent of foreigners.
The former president asserted that if the Taliban had not come to power, the government would have been digitalised within two weeks.