Afghan government agencies may have wasted billions of dollars in direct U.S. aid because U.S. officials turned a blind eye toward profound problems with that country’s money-management abilities — all to preserve the illusion of success in the NATO coalition’s war against the Taliban.
Officials with the Combined Security Transition Command told the U.S. Department of Defense Inspector General that they felt “pressure to maintain hard-fought gains” in the development of Afghan security forces and as a result, were willing to “overlook” troubled contracts made possible by U.S. and coalition funds.
The defense inspector general made the report public following Freedom of Information Act requests from the Washington Examiner and other media outlets.
The Pentagon watchdog found that Afghan agencies enforced no formal spending requirements to protect the flood of funding the U.S. and other nations poured into the country to support the developing national security forces.
The inspector general warned that Afghanistan would not be able to continue functioning without uninterrupted support of NATO contributions if it didn’t address the contracting problems.
“Until it mitigates these challenges, [the government of Afghanistan] will continue to depend on coalition-provided capabilities,” the report said. “Future direct assistance funds are vulnerable to fraud and abuse.”
The Pentagon pumped $3.3 billion into Afghanistan’s security forces between 2010 and 2013 and plans to contribute another $13 billion between 2015 and 2019. Defense officials were tasked with “mentoring” Afghan managers working on U.S.-funded security contracts, with the ultimate goal of transferring project management to the local authorities.
Afghanistan and the Combined Security Transition Command even signed a bilateral agreement to safeguard U.S. assistance against waste and abuse.
But the Pentagon didn’t consistently enforce the terms of the agreement, allowing the Afghan ministries to shirk their oversight responsibilities and ignoring the fact that few had set up basic contracting requirements.
“One of the main reasons the ministries did not develop the required level of capacity was internal pressure to not allow the Afghans to fail,” the inspector general said.
Afghan officials did little in the way of oversight, allowing senior military officials there to get away with “blatant and gross violations” of contracting laws.
“The IGs were not independent from ministry officials, which made them reluctant to identify and investigate any allegations of fraudulent activities,” the report said. “As a result, [Combined Security Transition Command] officials stated that the IGs did not report a single case of fraud or abuse by a general officer.”
The lack of contracting requirements for U.S.-backed projects across the Afghan government resulted in millions of wasted funds.
For example, the Afghan Ministry of Defense overpaid more than $180 million for fuel it purchased that was intended for fleets of vehicles that didn’t even work.
The Ministry of Defense couldn’t conduct basic oversight functions such as checking whether contractors actually provided the amount of fuel they promised.
Weak Afghan audit offices didn’t detect frequent “contract irregularities” across the government. In fact, Pentagon officials said they were “unaware of any ministry internal audits or the capacity of the offices to conduct them” in the first place.
The U.S. has sought additional funding for Afghan security forces in recent weeks in a push to grow the country’s troop size through 2017.
Earlier this year, the U.S. Resolute Support Mission — which succeeded the coalition command — attempted to classify large swaths of data about the Afghan security forces, including how U.S. funds were being spent to train and equip the country’s troops.
The Pentagon reversed its decision to keep such information out of the public eye amid outrage from lawmakers in Congress.
