Giving Karzai Aid and a 20 Percent Profit
An auditor of the U.S. reconstruction effort in Afghanistan warned that a transition of all private security in the country to the Afghan Public Protection Force threatens to throw costs spiraling out of control and raises serious concerns about the safety of aid workers and ability for projects to continue.
President Hamid Karzai’s mandate also means his government stands to nicely profit from the “significant” cost increase by the state-owned APPF even while receiving U.S. aid, the leaders of a House subcommittee heard Thursday.
“The transition to the APPF poses one of the most significant challenges that the U.S. government and its implementing partners have faced since the beginning of the reconstruction effort in 2002,” Steven J. Trent, the acting special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction, told the Oversight and Government Reform National Security, Homeland Defense and Foreign Operations Subcommittee.
“I think this nation-building exercise is a huge debacle,” said Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah). “We need more exposure and oversight.”
There’s also no guarantee that rogue members of the Afghan protection forces wouldn’t harm their western clients, though USAID told the committee that “there has been a dramatic overall decrease in our need for security.”
J. Alexander Thier, assistant to the administrator for the Office of Afghanistan and Pakistan Affairs at the U.S. Agency for International Development, said that it was largely a matter of “same guards, different uniforms” in the transition, yet as the process continues “we will continue to monitor costs and seek opportunities to reduce overall expenses without sacrificing security.”
“Right now we do not have indication that there is any increase in insecurity,” even after anti-American sentiment has been stirred by incidents this year, he said. “Our reliance on armed guards has dramatically decreased.”
“I don’t have a great degree of confidence in their ability,” Ranking Member John Tierney (D-Mass.) said of the APPF, advising the optimistic USAID representative to “hope for the best but plan for the worst.”
Thier said his agency has “detailed contingency plans,” though “we continue to work in extremely dangerous locations side-by-side with their military.”
The Afghan government put a March 20 deadline on the transition that puts all security for reconstruction and aid workers in its court.
“The APPF is rapidly evolving as it hastens to build the capacity to provide security services,” Trent said, noting that by March 2011 more than one-fifth of all Department of Defense contracted personnel in Afghanistan were providing security services.
“The Afghan government’s decision in 2010 to disband PSCs has created new security challenges for U.S. agencies and their implementing partners.”
Karzai’s decree, which was ostensibly a move to fight corruption and prevent civilian casualties, ordered the dissolution of private security contractors within four months without a backup plan to provide security for reconstruction activities. The Ministry of the Interior eventually determined that the companies could see out the end of their contracts; a target date of March 2013 was then set for APPF, which aims to have 25,000 guards by then, to assume security responsibility over all coalition construction sites.
The inspector general analyzed 13 projects in which security under the APPF is expected to cost as much as 46 percent higher, an additional $3.1 million.
This includes new fees that Karzai’s rent-a-cops will rake in — a 20 percent profit to most charges associated with each guard, Trent testified.
“Shame on us,” Tienery said. “I’ve watched [Karzai's] act for a long time… we rolled over again.”
Even while the Afghan government will be pulling in a tidy profit, it will do so while still pulling in international funds Kabul says it needs to pay for police and military past the 2014 withdrawal date.
“We’re going to spend more for the same thing,” Chaffetz said. “…We’re moving, in my estimation, in the wrong direction. We pay for everything.”
“The APPF official website acknowledges the uncertainty about how much the new arrangement is going to cost, noting that ‘while it is impossible to provide exact figures at this time before contracts have been established, we expect there will be some increase in cost for companies, particularly if they choose to use the services of a Risk Management Consultancy in addition to contracting with the APPF for guards,’” Trent said.
The inspector general was only able to provide a minimum for security costs for 29 of USAID’s largest projects from 2009-2011: $2.9 billion, in which security costs per project ranged from 14 percent to 42 percent.
“We don’t whether costs will go up, we don’t know whether costs will go down,” Thier, who estimated a 16 percent increase, said when grilled about the expenditures. “Our current indication today is that none of our programs are going to shut down.”
An industry group brought up recent violence to the committee in regard to Karzai’s new way of doing security business.
“When bidding on new work in Afghanistan, companies will need to rely for the first time on the APPF for the vetting and training of new guards,” the Professional Services Council, which represents government contractors, said in a submitted statement to the committee. “Given growing concerns about so-called ‘green on blue’ attacks by uniformed Afghans on U.S. and coalition personnel, the use of new APPF guards complicates both the risk assessment and cost projections when deciding whether, and at what price, development projects can be successfully completed in Afghanistan.”
“The Afghan government is saying you have no choice, you have to do this,” Chaffetz said. “I don’t think the State Department’s standing up enough.”
Isn’t this supposed to be 0′s “good” war? Of course, they didn’t learn a thing from the mess in Iraq following the withdrawal of U.S. troops. We have 800 or so “diplomats” and twice that number of “guards” to protect them. Even at that, most U.S. employees don’t get off the “Green Zone” compound.
OK we won several years ago we shoud take our stuff and come home with a hot that is they piss us off we will come back and they will be sorry.
that’ll work.Anything to get out of yet another third world sh_t hole which is all we are in over there.
The third world sees us as a huge target.
In their eyes we are loaded with free money and its their job to relieve of us as much as we are willing to give them.
Other than that the rest is up to sharia law since when you boil it all down that’s where you windup.
Karzai is beyond corrupt he makes saddaam look like a miser,we just don’t get it.
What percent of wealth does the political class of any nation take for itself, either by vote or with mercenaries?
Absolutely. When is somebody going to create a Corruption Curve, so we can at least price in the cost of the most durable aspect of economics?
Still being in Operation Enduring Insanity in Afcrapistan is insane and extremely anti-American. Soldiers and Marines are losing life and limb for nothing but their dereliction of duty general’s hubris. Today’s Army and Marine generals have shown time and again that they place the United States Constitution, even though all military officers take a sworn and unambiguous oath to it, as inferior to the koran, or as David Petraeus calls it, “The Holy Qur’an”. We now have the worst generals this country, maybe any country, has ever known. Today’s military has become a sarcasm. General Robert E. Lee had more loyalty to the United States Constitution than do today’s generals. So did Benedict Arnold. patton would have all of today’s Army and Marine generals shot.
“has become a sarcasm”?
By the way, one of the soldiers Patton beat had malaria and a fever of 102. The other “coward” had requested to be sent to the front, but his doctors refused.
So you are right in that Patton was a hot-headed moron. Still he had no authority to execute people.
Pardon me. A sarcasm and a burlesque … and a joke. Patton did not beat them. And how does one get malaria in Europe? Now Patton may have been a little “Hot headed”, but unlike today’s generals, he was certainly no moron and no anti-American. He was very patriotic and saw with great clarity.
Slap/beat/assaulted… he was being a jerk.
This author claims that the guy had malaria. Perhaps he is lying just to sell books, I don’t know.
You may have meant ‘anachronism’ rather than sarcasm. I hope.
No, I meant the current generals are a sarcasm alright as they do make me bite my lips in rage. I did have a grandfather who contracted malaria when he was in the service but he was in the Marines and served in the far east and south america.
As to Patton not being here now to take care of today’s rotten generals, more’s the pity.
What if it takes a hundred years for them to like girls getting educated? We can’t just leave. And who are they going to shoot at if we’re gone? Has anyone thought about that? Don’t tell me money is a problem. Even if no one wants to lend us money we can still print it. The Afghans really like our money. That’s a start.
The ovious positive answer is, “They’ll shoot at each other!”
Still, if we could consider these training wars, they leave us with the only field-experienced Army in the world. Even more important is experience in Islamic conflict.
I do wish we’d stop paying these idjits to shoot our best, though.
The Congressmen who control the contracts should be personally paying reparations to veterans’ families and wounded vets.
Afghanistan will fall just like South Vietnam did. And how many billions of dollars were wasted by trying to prop up the regime in South Vietnam? A lot, and the American government knows it.
Same thing is going to happen in Afghanistan. We are going to be out of there by 2014 at the latest, if not sooner. All of the equipment, all of the weapons, all of the vehicles, all of the money we gave the Karzai government will be lost to the Taliban as it was in South Vietnam, when the North Vietnamese kept using American equipment and weapons for years after we left. No, this has disaster written all over it and we have nobody to blame but ourselves. We should have left that poor excuse for a “country” years ago, but we didn’t because Bush was determined to make “nation-building” work and Obama was trapped in his own 2008 election year lie, when he said that Afghanistan was the “Good War.” He only said that to get after the Republicans for their stupid adventure in Iraq and the Democrats, as well as the majority of the nation, bought it. And now we’re going to leave Afghanistan and, once again, the only people who will do well are Karzai and his minions who will probably retire comfortably in Dubai once they are finally forced to run away. And all we will be left is are more images of helicopters flying off of the roof of the American embassy in Kabul. Doesn’t anybody, ANYBODY, in Washington ever read a history book every now and then?
“Indochina is devoid of decisive military objectives and the allocation of more than token US armed forces in Indochina would be a serious diversion of limited US capabilities” (Joint Chiefs of Staff, 26 May 1954).
“The United States could not have prevented the forcible reunification of Vietnam under communist auspices at a morally, materially, and strategically acceptable price.” (The US Army War College Quarterly, Winter 1996-97).
Congress basically gave authorization for the Vietnam War with the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, a resolution based on ‘events’, part of which were highly exaggerated and part of which never happened. 50,000 more Americans then went on to die. “There is nothing new under the sun”.
Donald Rumsfeld was right. Bush sacked him.
The proper course of action, it seems, is to leave Afghanistan, but to put it under a form of quarantine. Which means no aid or military assistance, and severe limits on accepting Afghans as immigrants or asylum seekers. We’ve wasted enough money trying to win over “hearts and minds”, and we know enough about that depraved culture that we shouldn’t want to bring it to our shores.