Commentary: Afghan aid at risk

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/02/09/182440/commentary-afghan-aid-at-risk.html

Commentary: Afghan aid at risk
Ben Barber | Special to McClatchy Newspapers
Posted on Saturday, February 9, 2013

Billions of dollars worth of U.S. development projects in Afghanistan – from roads to clinics to police stations – may fail to serve any useful purpose, because U.S. troops have been rapidly withdrawn from many areas leaving insecurity, corruption and violence, a senior U.S. official said in Washington.

President Barack Obama has pledged to pull nearly all U.S. troops out of Afghanistan by the end of 2014 and recently – at a meeting with President Hamid Karzai in Washington - said he would begin by spring this year to pull troops out of the countryside into fortified bases where they could train Afghan troops.

When U.S. troops are in the countryside, they create a security “bubble” also called the “golden hour,” allowing swift evacuation to medical care in case of injury. When U.S. troops are not nearby, it is no longer safe for U.S. officials to monitor the projects, said John F. Sopko, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR).

Sopko said he recently visited an Afghan customs police compound in Kunduz, built with millions of U.S. taxpayers’ dollars. It was intended to hold more than 100 Afghan officers but only a dozen occupied the compound. And they did not even have the keys to several of the buildings the U.S. built.