BILLIONS OF DOLLARS WASTED IN AFGHANISTAN

If the evidence hold ups, Congressional investigations into wasteful spending in Afghanistan will find that the scale of the problem matches Iraq where billions of US taxpayer dollars are unaccounted for.
According to some Pentagon estimates, the US spends approximately $1 billion a month in Afghanistan which, like Iraq, is showing few signs that the hundreds of billions spend in both countries since 2002 have created the democracies the Bush administration promised the American public. Since 2003, most of the focus has been on Iraq but with increasing Taliban attacks against NATO forces attention is turning to Afghanistan. It now clear the Bush administration’s image of that country contradicts the reality. Yet, President Bush in his latest State of the Union repeated his customary mantra that Afghanistan was a success story. The truth is that most of the country remains lawless and is controlled by warlords and their militias. And, Afghanistan continues to rank as the world’s largest heroin producer. Add to that, the inability of the central government t to exercise any control beyond the capital, Kabul. Therefore people want to know how the US could spend vast sums of money and not dramatically improve the lives of Afghans and radically upgrade the infrastructure. Afghans themselves have been asking the same question for years, as have some international agencies and observers.
When trying to find answers to the money question, one has to recognize the fact that the Defense Department finds it hard to account for much of its spending. In September 2005, it conceded that it spent $115 billions fighting terrorism between 2001 through May 2005 but possessed no detailed figures for approximately $7 billions of that sum spent in Iraq and Afghanistan.
An example of the way the Pentagon handles money was evident in 2004 when it overstated the cost of Army reservists by over $2.1 billion. Contrast that with the spending by the Provisional Authority in Iraq during its short lifespan – April 2003 – 2004. It was allocated close to $39 billion but also spent $19.7 billions in cash from UN administered Iraqi oil funds. Most of the cash was never fully audited and was apparently used to restore services.
Like Iraq, Afghanistan offers lots of examples of highways, hospitals and schools that were never built even though companies received large sums of money for their construction. In 2005, an Afghan journalist, Mirwais Harooni openly criticized road building by US contractors. He citied wasteful spending as a major issue and gave as an example a 389 kilometer highway leading from Kabul. A US company, the St. Louis based Berger Group was awarded the contract over international companies even though its cost per kilometer was $700,000 compared to $250,000 from reputable competitors. In the end, Berger Group outsourced the job to Turkish and Indian companies. At the same time, Berger Group was behind schedule on a separate $656 million contract to build schools. The former Afghan Planning Minister, Ramazan Bashard has publicly lambasted US contractors by claiming the Taliban built better roads.
Ashraf Ghani, the country’s Finance Minister between 2004 – 2004 compiled a report on foreign aid spending for the Overseas Development Institute that highlighted some of the wasteful use of US and foreign aid. He pointed to the fact that international agencies were being contracted to build schools for approximately $250,000 each when they could have built for $40,000 by the Afghan authorities. He pointed to another absurd example of US planning, namely the building of the road between Kabul and Kandahar. The Afghan government estimated its cost at $35 million but it eventually cost the US taxpayer $190 million in contracts to US companies. In Mr. Ghani’s opinion, 90% of the $1 billion reconstruction funds provided by the US in 2002 were wasted.
Because of the vast sums of money the US sets aside for Afghanistan, lots of vested interests are constantly jockeying for a slice of the action with the result that there are over 2,000 international aid agencies in Afghanistan. Ghani claims that when he was in government he was upset that outside agencies poached his best workers by paying them large salaries. He saw that as one of the negative effects of the way in which aid was channeled through NGOs - non-governmental organizations- and not through the Afghan government which he contends could have used it much more frugally and wisely.
In his report, he heavily criticized international aid agencies for spending huge sums of money on staff salaries, as well as for the setting up of headquarters and the purchase of the latest technical equipment. He described them driving around in expensive off-road vehicles emblazoned with their respective company logos. They also employed mostly US experts whose fees and living expenses were outrageous. He warned that the use of outside experts meant Afghans were not given a chance to learn important skills because lucrative engineering contracts in particular were being outsourced mostly to US contractors. What he failed to recognize was that much of USAID has become a part of foreign policy and is handled by the State Department. Attached to it is the principle that whatever is spent overseas should benefit American corporations and if possible create consumers for American products. A case in point was the visit over a year ago of Laura Bush to Afghanistan where she promised $17.7 million to help women and girls and combat Aids. What she failed to mention was that the money had already been earmarked for a private for profit American university of Afghanistan.
One of the most egregious uses of US taxpayer dollars has been the handing out of millions upon millions in cash to buy the loyalty of Afghan warlords and their militias. There is evidence the CIA and other clandestine agencies of the US government have driven into remote villages with jeeps packed with fresh dollar bills. The subsequent handouts of those dollars are not registered in spending figures presented to Congress.
The Defense Department has spent billions on paying contractor mercenaries who operate in Afghanistan and Iraq. The estimates of the numbers of ex-soldiers on the DOD’s book vary between 30,000 and 35,000. They have been hired to boost the number of US soldiers on the ground and to hide the fact that both conflict zones have had inadequate numbers of combat personnel to deal with growing insurgencies. Detailed figures for that aspect of the war are hard to come by.
Congressional investigators will this year direct serious scrutiny at the big players who have got the juiciest contracts in both Afghanistan and Iraq. They include: Kellogg Brown & Root Halliburton; Parsons Group, Fluor Corps; Washington Group International and Bechtel Inc. Between 2002 and 2004, Halliburton of which Vice- President Dick Cheney was once CEO received contracts worth approximately $11.5 billion. Parsons Group was the second largest recipient with $5.5 billion and the other three had contracts in the region of $3.3 billion. Corporate construction giants like Parsons and Halliburton are known to spend as much as $1 million a year in lobbying Congress and their Boards read like a Who’s Who of former US government employees, including members of Congress and the Armed Services. So far, the Justice Department under the Bush Administration has done little to make corporations and individuals legally responsible for the large sums of US taxpayer dollars that have been wasted in Iraq and Afghanistan,
One of the factors that has emerged from investigations into wasteful spending is that some international aid promises, from countries other than the US and Britain, can be categorized as “phantom aid.” That kind of aid represents tens of millions of dollars pledged by countries across the globe. Unfortunately, it never finds its way to Kabul or Baghdad. Very often it is pledged as public relations exercises by governments and heads of states. What happens to that money is a mystery. It can be earmarked for aid to Iraq or Afghanistan but then set a side for clandestine projects or placed into private accounts.