Foreign Assistance: U.S. Economic and Democratic Assistance to the Central Asian Republics

Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO examined the economic and democratic assistance that the United States has provided to the Central Asian Republics (CAR) of Kazakhstan, the Kyrgyz Republic, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan, focusing on: (1) what the Agency for International Development's (AID) economic and democratic reform initiatives in the CAR were designed to achieve, what has been accomplished, and what factors, if any, have limited the implementation of reforms; (2) whether lessons learned from similar AID programs in Central Europe and Russia have been applied in CAR; and (3) how AID ensures that its assistance funds in CAR are spent for intended purposes.