Here’s How the Military Wasted Your Money in Afghanistan

Unfinished projects, unnecessary equipment, rampant corruption ...
Matthew Gault on Dec 3

American taxpayers have spent more than $100 billion on thousands of reconstruction projects in Afghanistan—everything from new prisons, bases and barracks to weapons and airplanes for Afghan security forces. The idea was that the U.S. would leave Afghanistan in a better state than it found it. The reality is that military and civilian officials wasted billions of dollars in reconstruction funds on incomplete, botched and unnecessary projects.

The Pentagon blew $7.6 billion fighting a war on opium, but today Afghanistan’s poppy crop is bigger than ever. The U.S. Air Force bought half a billion dollars worth of transport planes—then scrapped them for six cents a pound. The Pentagon spent five years and $20 million renovating a dilapidated Soviet-era prison. The project still isn’t finished and the contractors now face corruption charges. And the list of wasteful projects goes on.

It’s the job of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction to tally, audit and inspect America’s various projects in the country. SIGAR warned the State Department about the sad state of American-funded reconstruction in Afghanistan way back in 2010. The inspector general checked in again in 2013 and—surprise, surprise—discovered that no one had done anything about the waste, fraud and abuse. “State never finalized the draft 2010 U.S. anti-corruption strategy for Afghanistan,” SIGAR found. “And—according to agency officials—the draft strategy and its related implementation plan are no longer in effect.” With billions of dollars on the table and little oversight, the Pentagon, the State Department and the government of Afghanistan went wild. SIGAR is still sorting through the mess.

Half-ass construction
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers built thousands of buildings for the Afghan military. And in most of the structures, contractors used low-quality insulation—a kind of spray-on polyurethane foam that’s highly flammable. So flammable that international building codes prohibit its use. Contractors sprayed the stuff in 1,600 buildings. SIGAR called out the error and Corps and its contractors promised to stop using the stuff … and to go back and replace the faulty insulation. Then Maj. Gen. Michael Eyre—the man in charge of USACE in Afghanistan—overturned the decision. Because, Eyre argued, the occupants could simply sprint outdoors if their structures caught fire.

See pictures of the amazing waste of taxes gone to the Dept of Defense: https://medium.com/war-is-boring/heres-how-the-military-wasted-your-money-in-afghanistan-b392e3e84e5a