Top 6 Ways to Burn Taxpayers' Millions in Afghanistan
Special Inspector General for Aghanistan Reconstruction
There's the half-billion dollar aircraft fleet that sits unused on the cracked tarmac. There's the $230 million in spare vehicle parts that are unaccounted for. There are the handful of waste incinerators, priced at a few million dollars each, that have never burned much beyond holes in taxpayer pockets.
When the U.S. embarked on its massive war fighting and nation building effort in Afghanistan, there was bound to be waste and fraud, but a look back at the reports and letters compiled in 2013 by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) shows U.S. taxpayer money dumped down the drain, sometimes tens of millions at a time, more than a decade since the first American troops landed in the Southwest Asian nation.
"Over the last year we have uncovered countless instances of waste, fraud, and abuse," Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction John Sopko told ABC News. "Time and time again, we have found the reconstruction effort plagued by problems of poor planning and poor oversight… Unfortunately, all too often we are not asking the simple questions before we pump money into a project, such as, do the Afghans want it? Do they need it? Can they sustain it? And can we oversee it? We can get this right, but we need to be diligent with taxpayer funds and individuals need to be held accountable."
What follows in this report are examples of waste SIGAR said it uncovered on the ground in Afghanistan in military construction and general reconstruction projects – examples the Pentagon insists are not emblematic of America's effort in the war-torn nation.
A spokesperson for the Defense Department acknowledged the "challenges" presented by helping to build a country in the midst of a war, but said that while "there have been some instances of underperforming projects, these are vastly outweighed by the positive cumulative impact of the wide array of successful projects."
"Singling out a few underperforming projects-or misrepresenting or misconstruing the reasons why a project's results did not turn out as expected and drawing larger conclusion about the effectiveness of reconstruction efforts-detracts from an accurate understanding of the overall positive impact that reconstruction has had on Afghanistan," the Department told ABC News. The spokesperson also noted that the problems with many of the projects discussed in this report were uncovered well before 2013 and were only referenced again recently in SIGAR reports or letters.
[Portions of the Defense Department's responses to the SIGAR reports on various projects are included in this report. To read the Department's full statement to ABC News, CLICK HERE.]
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