What follows are 10 notable cases, stripped of figuring out details, collated by CNN over the years.
1) Kabul’s winter blanket
The Tarakhil power plant was commissioned in 2007 as a backup generator for the capital, in case electricity supply from Uzbekistan was compromised.
A vast, trendy structure, it ran on diesel-fueled turbines, supplied by a model-name engineering big. There was one catch: Afghanistan had scant diesel supply of its personal. Needed to ship the gasoline in by truck — making the plant too costly to run.
The facility itself value $335 million to build, and had an estimated annual gasoline value of $245 million. The newest SIGAR assessment mentioned at greatest it was used at just 2.2% capacity, because the Afghan authorities couldn’t afford the gas. In the event you loved this post and you would like to obtain details about diesel power generator, dribbble.com, kindly go to our own web site. USAID declined to comment.
Traffic passes by the Tarakhil power plant in September 2011.
2) A half-billion-dollar fleet of cargo planes that flew for a 12 months
Afghanistan’s fledgling air force wanted cargo planes. In 2008, the Pentagon selected the G222 — an Italian-designed aircraft designed to take off and land on tough runways. That first yr, in accordance with a speech made by SIGAR’s chief John Sopko, citing a USAF officer, the planes had been very busy.
But they would not be sustainable. The aircraft had been only seen by SIGAR when Sopko noticed them parked at Kabul airport and asked what they have been doing there.
Six years after the procurement was launched, the sixteen aircraft delivered to Afghanistan have been bought for scrap for $40,257. The price of the challenge: $549 million.
3) The $36 million Marines HQ in the desert, neither wished nor used
Sopko stated in a speech this 64,000-square foot control heart in Helmand epitomized how when a challenge starts, it typically can’t be stopped.
In 2010, the Marines had been surging troop numbers in Helmand, the deadliest a part of Afghanistan. A command and control heart on the main base of Camp Leatherneck was ordained as part of the trouble, though Sopko recalled the bottom commander and two other marine generals said it was not wanted as it wouldn’t be completed fast sufficient.
Sopko stated the thought of returning the funds allocated to Congress was “was so abhorrent to the contracting command, it was constructed anyway. The power was by no means occupied, Camp Leatherneck was turned over to the Afghans, who abandoned it.”
It cost $36 million, was by no means used, and seems to have been later stripped by the Afghans, who additionally never appeared to use it.
Major Robert Lodewick, backup diesel genset generator a DoD spokesman, stated in a press release the SIGAR report contained “factual errors,” objected to how it implied “malfeasance” by some officers, and stated the $36 million figure included ancillary costs like roads to the HQ.
US Marine MSgt. Charles Albrecht watches a building crew engaged on an enormous new base at Camp Letherneck, Helmand province, in March 2009.
4) $28 million on an inappropriate camouflage pattern
In 2007, new uniforms were being ordered for the Afghan military. The Afghan protection minister Wardak mentioned he wished a rare camouflage pattern, “Spec4ce Forest,” from Canadian company HyperStealth.
A total of 1.3 million units have been ordered, costing $43-eighty each, versus $25-30 initially estimated for alternative uniforms. The uniforms have been never tested or evaluated in the sector, and there may be simply 2.1% forest cowl across Afghanistan.
In testimony, Sopko stated it cost taxpayers an extra $28 million to buy the uniforms with a patented pattern, and SIGAR projected in 2017 a special alternative of sample could have saved a possible $seventy two million over the following decade.
DoD spokesman Lodewick said the report “overestimated” the fee, and “incorrectly discredited the value of the type of sample selected,” including a lot of the fighting in Afghanistan occurred in verdant areas.
5) $1.5 million every day on fighting opium manufacturing
The US spent $1.5 million a day on counter-narcotics programs (from 2002 to 2018). Opium production was, in response to the final SIGAR report, up in 2020 by 37% in comparison with the yr before. This was the third-highest yield since records began in 1994.
In 2017, production was 4 instances what it was in 2002. A State department spokesperson famous “the Taliban have been the first factor contributing to poppy’s persistence lately” and “that the Taliban have committed to banning narcotics.”
A tractor eradicates opium poppies in Nangarhar province in January 2007.
6) $249 million on an incomplete road
An in depth ring road around Afghanistan was funded by multiple grants and donors, totaling billions through the course of the struggle. Towards the end of the project, a 233-kilometer section within the North, between the towns of Qeysar and Laman, led to $249 million being handed out to contractors, but solely 15% of the road being built, a SIGAR audit reported.
Between March 2014 and September 2017, power generator there was no development on this part, and what had been constructed deteriorated, the report concluded. USAID declined to remark.
7) $eighty five million resort that never opened
An extensive resort and residence advanced was commissioned subsequent to the US Embassy in Kabul, for which the US government supplied $85 million in loans.
In 2016, SIGAR concluded “the $85 million in loans is gone, the buildings were never accomplished and are uninhabitable, and the U.S. Embassy is now forced to offer security for the positioning at additional value to U.S. taxpayers.”
The audit concluded the contractor made unrealistic promises to safe the loans, and that the branch of the US government who oversaw the venture never visited the location, and neither did the corporate they later employed to oversee the mission. A State department spokesperson stated they didn’t handle the development and it was “a private endeavor.”
8) The fund that spent more on itself than Afghanistan
The Pentagon created the task Force for Business and Stability Operations (TFBSO) expanded from Iraq to include Afghanistan in 2009, for whose operations in Afghanistan Congress set aside $823 million.
Over half the money actually spent by TFBSO — $359 million of $675 million — was “spent on oblique and assist prices, not directly on projects in Afghanistan,” SIGAR concluded in an audit.
They reviewed 89 of the contracts TFBSO made, and located “7 contracts worth $35.1 million have been awarded to firms using former TFBSO employees as senior executives.”
An audit additionally concluded that the fund spent about $6 million on supporting the cashmere industry, $43 million on a compressed pure gas station, and $150 million on excessive-finish villas for its workers.
DoD spokesman Lodewick mentioned SIGAR didn’t accuse anyone of fraud or the misuse of funds, took concern with “weaknesses and shortcomings” in the audit, and said “28 of TFBSO’s 35 tasks met or partially met their meant goals.”
9) The healthcare facility in the sea
A 2015 report into USAID’s funding of healthcare amenities in Afghanistan stated that over a third of the 510 projects they’d been given coordinates for, did not exist in those places. Thirteen had been “not located in Afghanistan, with one located within the Mediterranean Sea.” Thirty “have been located in a province totally different from the one USAID reported.”
And “189 showed no bodily structure within 400 ft of the reported coordinates. Slightly below half of these areas, showed no physical structure within a half mile of the reported coordinates.” The audit mentioned that USAID and the Afghan ministry of Public Health could only provide “oversight of these amenities [if they] know the place they’re.” USAID declined to comment.
10) At the least $19 billion lost to “waste, fraud, abuse”
An October 2020 report presented a startling total for diesel power generator the conflict. Congress on the time had appropriated $134 billion since 2002 for reconstruction in Afghanistan.
SIGAR was in a position to evaluation $sixty three billion of it — nearly half. They concluded $19 billion of that — nearly a third — was “lost to waste, fraud, and abuse.”
DoD spokesman Lodewick stated they and “several different U.S. Government departments and agencies are already on report as having challenged a few of these reports as inaccurate and deceptive” and that their conclusions “appeared to overlook the difference between reconstruction efforts that may have been mismanaged willfully/negligently and those efforts that, on the time of the report, simply had fallen in need of strategic objectives.”