A hearing Wednesday on a $43 million gas station in Afghanistan turned into a conversation about whether the Pentagon should be in charge of overseas economic development projects at all.
Brian McKeon, the principal deputy undersecretary of defense for policy, appeared before the Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Readiness and Manpower Support over recent findings that a task force in Afghanistan spent hundreds of millions of dollars on projects to bolster the Afghan economy that didn’t yield any significant results.
The largest issue was the Task Force for Business and Stability Operations’ construction of a compressed natural gas station in Afghanistan that cost $43 million, according to an estimate reported by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction. A comparable station in Pakistan cost less than $500,000.
The huge costs and alleged waste led some lawmakers to question if the nation’s warfighters should really be in charge of growing foreign economies.
“Is DoD the best agency to do it?” said Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., and ranking member of the subcommittee.
He suggested that agencies who do that type of work daily, such as the United States Agency for International Development, would be a better fit.
McKeon said he was “skeptical that the Pentagon is the natural home of that mission.”
When pressed further by Sen. Martin Heinrich, D-N.M., McKeon said there had been questions about USAID or the State Department’s ability to operate in a war zone.
The oversight hearing was sparked by months of reports that found millions of dollars wasted by the task force responsible for helping to grow the Afghan economy, including helping Afghans harvest natural resources such as minerals or oil.
McKeon said some of the numbers released by the inspector general were not correct, noting that the gas station in question cost less than $10 million to build.
But John Sopko, the special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction, said that is still too much.
“Whether it’s $43 million or $20 million or $10 million, it’s still a lot more than should have been spent in Afghanistan,” he said.
Sen. Kelly Ayotte, R-N.H., said Congress must be especially aware of where tax dollars are going in today’s budget environment.
“Every dollar the Pentagon wastes is a dollar that we don’t have to restore military readiness and provide our troops what they need to protect themselves and our country. At a time of growing threats and constrained defense budgets, this kind of mismanagement and waste is simply unacceptable,” she said.
