Washington, January 25: The multi-billion-dollar US plan to rebuild Afghanistan has been dogged by widespread delays and fraud, a report by the Afghan reconstruction watchdog shows.
The startling testimony came from Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction, retired Major Arnold Fields on Monday, who was appearing before the US Wartime Contracting Commission.
Fields told the government watchdog that despite a massive $11.4 billion in funding, the reconstruction of the Afghan army and police forces was well off course.
This, he said, was due to the fact that cheating US contractors had siphoned off millions to bribe Afghan officials, used sub-standard materials, and denied the Afghan people the basic infrastructure they were promised.
The US-led strategy in war-ravaged Afghanistan is centered on gradually handing over authority to the Afghan forces in about two years’ time.
But Fields said, thanks to widespread corruption and delays in projects, US troops will have to be in the war-hit country until the year 2025.
The chief inspector stressed that this, along with the lack of a comprehensive plan to reconstruct the Asian country, has put the entire US-led Afghan war strategy in jeopardy.
“We conclude that the 11.4 billion (dollars) is at risk if these matters are not promptly addressed,” Fields said.
The overall $56 billion US plan for reconstructing Afghanistan consists of 884 infrastructure projects, of which, only 133 have been completed, with 78 underway, and a whopping 673 still not started.
The massive funding for the projects was raised through American taxpayer’s money — the majority of whom, oppose the war.
This is while reports say millions of dollars of the funding have gradually gone missing since the project was launched in 2002.
Political analyst Mohamed Oweis told Media that much of the missing money is hidden in the Swiss bank accounts of some members of the Afghan government, paid to them in contractor bribes.
The US Wartime Contracting Commission is expected to issue a final report on Afghanistan’s reconstruction next June.
But so far, most of the members of the panel admit they can’t keep up with all the money being thrown away by contractors that some call ‘crooks.’
“While we did see some very well-run projects, there were many more examples — too many examples — of projects that were not going so well. Too many projects came in over-budget and behind schedule,” said the chairman of the commission, Michael Thibault.
——-Agencies