Congress and watchdogs aren’t pleased about billions of wasted taxpayer dollars in the so-called forever wars.
Foreign Policy
By ROBBIE GRAMER, JACK DETSCH
Billions in Taxpayer Dollars Wasted on Afghanistan Development
It only cost U.S. taxpayers over half a billion dollars, but to be fair, they got back almost $41,000 for all the trouble.
A pair of damning new U.S. government watchdog reports shed light on the industrial-scale waste, fraud, and abuse of taxpayer dollars in Afghanistan. And it’s a sign of how inured Washington is to mismanagement in the Afghan War that the matter barely made a dent in the Washington news cycle. But one key U.S. lawmaker is speaking out.
Grounded. The U.S. Air Force wasted $549 million on purchasing Italian-made cargo planes for the Afghan government that didn’t work back in 2008, and now the Office of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) said no one involved in the deal will be held to account. SIGAR is the U.S. government watchdog monitoring how the government carries out stability and reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan.
It said that after a rushed acquisition process that skirted federal guidelines, the Air Force eventually sold 16 faulty planes for scrap metal for $40,257.
Unaccountability. SIGAR coordinated an investigation with the Defense Department and FBI, and referred the matter to the Justice Department for potential prosecution. The Justice Department has declined to prosecute anyone involved, according to the SIGAR report, saying it would be too difficult a case.
But wait, there’s more. A second SIGAR report released this week that takes a wider look at U.S. reconstruction projects found that Washington spent billions of dollars on projects that were either unnecessary or unwanted by the Afghan government. The agency assessed $7.8 billion spent since 2008, finding that $2.4 billion in assets were unused, abandoned, deteriorated, or destroyed. Only $1.2 billion worth were being used “as intended,” and only $343.2 million of the assets—or just over 4 percent of the total—were maintained in good condition.
The big takeaway? The assessments paint a grim picture of U.S. efforts to stabilize Afghanistan and finally withdraw from the country after two decades of war—a top priority for President Joe Biden. They also punctuate what some top Afghan analysts have been warning about for years: Large-scale corruption, fueled in part by an influx of U.S. and international donors, poses as great a threat to the future of Afghanistan as do the Taliban and other militant groups.
Par for the course? A key U.S. lawmaker who oversees spending on national security told Security Brief in an interview he wasn’t surprised to hear about the widespread waste of taxpayer funds. “It was extremely disappointing, although not surprising,” said Rep. Stephen Lynch, chairman of the House Oversight Subcommittee on National Security.
“The level of corruption there is just incredible, and it’s as big a threat I think as the Taliban is,” he added. He said federal agencies need to do a better job heeding warnings from the inspector general’s office to prevent more fraud and abuse on future reconstruction projects.
Some lawmakers and U.S. officials see reconstruction projects, as flawed as they are, as key to helping stabilize the Afghan government and its weak economy as a bulwark against the Taliban and more instability.
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