AFGHANISTAN ANOTHER FINANCIAL BLACK HOLE

AFGHANISTAN ANOTHER
FINANCIAL BLACK HOLE

By Staff at AFP



Amid all the talk about troop levels in Afghanistan little attention has been directed at the fact that the war has been creating yet another financial black hole for billions of American taxpayer dollars.
And if that is not a big enough problem, it was recently confirmed that billions of dollars Congress sent to Pakistan to bolster its role in the fight against Al Qaeda were never used for that purpose. Of $12 billion handed over to the Pakistan regime between 2001 and 2008 in the form of economic and military aid, $8.6 billion was earmarked for the “war on terror.” However, only $600 million was set aside for the Pakistani military’s counter insurgency role. The remaining $8 billion cannot be accurately accounted for because Musharraf and his generals are believed to have used some of it for economic programs to promote their political image as a kindly military dictatorship. According to the latest reports from Pakistan, the $600 million the military received proved inadequate for its anti-terror role. Meanwhile, billions of dollars from the aid package were also diverted to Pakistan’s nuclear program and to the purchase of military equipment to deal with the perceived border threat from India.
It is now estimated that by March 2010 the costs of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as the financial support provided to countries like Pakistan, will have reached the $1 trillion mark. If the Iraq war has provided a lesson for Congress vis a vis Afghanistan, tens of billions of dollars will never be traced to the programs they were designed to fund and billions will simply have found their way into the pockets of greedy politicians and people involved in reconstruction projects that never materialized.
In 2001, the Defense Department allocated billions to the Afghan conflict but for that year the exact figure is no longer available. In 2002, there was an expenditure of $20.8 billion and since then the annual outlay has risen steadily, reaching $60.2 billion in 2009. That creates an approximate total of $228 billion spent during the past 8 years in Afghanistan but the total is deceiving because it relates to U.S. combat troops and does not include money spent on other personnel involved in what was once hailed as “Operation Infinite Justice” but later changed to “Operation Enduring Freedom” to avoid giving offense to Muslims. For example, there are 74, 000 “contractor” personnel on the Pentagon’s books and those numbers are expected to rise. It is hard to calculate the exact cost of having so many mercenaries in the war zone but a five-year contract with Xe, formerly Blackwater, is believed to be in the region of $250 million and that is merely for protecting diplomatic personnel and facilities.
When one is confronted with such vast sums it becomes hard to do the math and history has shown that Washington has never been good at keeping tabs on taxpayer dollars. Iraq was a glaring example of Washington’s failure to manage vast sums set aside for the war. As we now know, billions simply vanished, much of it in cash. And billions more will now be needed to pay for the exit from Iraq, including the tens of thousands of pieces of military equipment that will have to be transported Stateside or to Afghanistan. Financial projections provided by the Defense Dept. are generally rough estimates that hide some basic facts. For instance, it is reckoned that the price of getting a gallon of gas into Afghanistan ranges from $75 to $100. Add to that the fact that the U.S. military uses anywhere from 750,000 to 900,000 gallons a day and it becomes difficult to reach an exact figure for energy use alone.
With the Obama White House asking for additional funding for Afghanistan it is only fair to conclude that the projected annual budget will far outstrip what was previously allocated for Iraq. Many of the costs envisaged are essentially projections and will be well off the mark because they are unlikely to take account big spending on facilities such as bases, prisons, the training and arming of Afghan police and soldiers and the cash needed to fund militia support. Since 2001, more than $10 billion has been spent on trying to train the Afghan police force with few positive results. Funds earmarked for training the police and army have been funneled through the Afghan government which, like its Pakistani and Iraqi counterparts, is riddled with corrupt officials eager and ready and to siphon off American taxpayer dollars into overseas bank accounts. If Obama’s plan to create a modern Afghan army and police force is followed through the costs of such a project will be enormous. Afghans would not only have to be trained, armed and paid salaries but bases would have to be constructed throughout the country to accommodate them. The task of training the police alone would be daunting because the billions spent to date have led to the training of at best 20% of the country’s police force.
Then, there is the potential cost of expanding the State Department’s physical presence in Pakistan and Afghanistan. It is pitched at a possible $736 million, which does not include ancillary outlays on staffing and security. In Pakistan, the free money trail is particularly difficult to follow once billions are routed through the power structure. That was the case but was not publicly admitted by Congress during Musharraf’s period in office. It only started to feature as an issue in 2008 when the U.S. Government Accountability Office implied, in language carefully constructed not to be blunt, that Pakistan had been playing fast and loose with subsidies. The reality was that Pakistan had been using “creative” accounting practices to extract additional funds from Washington. Some observers later termed it “over-billing” but in reality it was a cleverly constructed theft. Under Musharraf problems arose because all U.S. funding was handled by him and his military top brass. It later transpired that he and some of his generals were more concerned about using billions for pet projects than they were about the fact Al Qaeda was rebuilding its base within Pakistan and the Taliban was gaining a significant foothold in parts of the country. As a consequence, the country’s military did not get enough funding to upgrade its capabilities for battling insurgents on its own soil. That did not stop the authorities in Islamabad from billing the U.S. for military operations that Washington had already funded.
The Pentagon has acknowledged that there are no mechanisms in place to follow money once it reaches Kabul and Islamabad. That has not stopped the Obama administration and Congress from proposing to provide Pakistan with another $7.5billion over the next five years. While the country’s new civilian government appears happy to get the money, the country’s generals are concerned there may be too many strings attached, namely the monitoring of the Pakistani army’s “anti-terror” efforts. But, if the past is anything to go by Pakistan’s generals should not worry a great deal since Washington has admitted it can rarely trace money when it leaves the U.S. As for strings attached to subsidies, few if any strings have ever been properly tied to the massive sums of money already sent to the war zones.
Aside from the hundreds of billions of American taxpayer dollars spent on the wars, and the financial black hole that is Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, the real issue in Afghanistan is that more money, more boots on the ground and greater firepower will not defeat the Taliban. As insurgents, they are probably the best trained in the world and they can use the terrain effectively and adapt when needed. The truth is that America will continue to bleed money and blood while the war in Afghanistan continues.