By Ken Dilanian, USA TODAY
March 10, 2010
WASHINGTON — The State Department is failing to properly oversee nearly $2 billion in contracts to battle the drug trade, build infrastructure and train police in Afghanistan, according to a bluntly worded internal assessment.
The report by the department’s inspector general questions whether the U.S. will be able to stabilize the country in time to meet President Obama’s goal of withdrawing some troops by June 2011.
“Embassy oversight of contracts and grants is seriously inhibited by the dangerous security conditions … as well as by the shortage of qualified contract officer representatives in Kabul,” says the report, released last week. The embassy “faces serious challenges in meeting the administration’s deadline for ’success’ in Afghanistan,” it adds.
The embassy, which reports to special representative Richard Holbrooke, says the report is generally “accurate in its assessments,” spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden said in an e-mail from Kabul. “We are already implementing a great majority of the report’s recommendations.”
That includes better contract oversight, said Deputy Secretary of State Jacob Lew. “We’re very much aware of the problems that developed in Iraq and are working to avoid outcomes that would be problematic,” he said.
In a January cable reported by The New York Times, U.S. Ambassador Karl Eikenberry, who runs the embassy, questioned whether the military could meet its timeline for turning over the country to Afghan forces.
The ambassador and his team “have made impressive progress,” the report acknowledges. It attributes some problems to the rapid expansion of the embassy’s staff, which is growing from 320 to 900 with 100% turnover from the Bush administration. Other key criticisms:
• Frequent visits by senior officials and members of Congress divert diplomats from crucial counterinsurgency tasks.
• The embassy doesn’t have enough people to carry out anti-corruption and outreach initiatives.
• No one on the public affairs and website staff speaks Pashto, the language of the areas being contested in the counterinsurgency.
The Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction recently blasted the State Department’s oversight of a $2.5 billion contract with DynCorp to train Iraq’s police force, saying invoices were paid with no assurance the work was done correctly. The problem is being repeated in Afghanistan, this new report says.
Because of security concerns, diplomats often can’t visit training sites or other U.S. taxpayer-funded projects, the report says. Just five contract officers in Kabul “cannot provide effective oversight” of $1.8 billion in contracts, the report says. Two officers have since been added, Hayden said.
The report also undercuts a key example cited by Holbrooke as part of his pledge to reduce the government’s reliance on contractors for reconstruction and aid projects. In discussing that change, Holbrooke has repeatedly cited his canceling of a $30 million contract for women’s programs. He said he gave the money to the Kabul embassy.
However, the embassy doesn’t have people to oversee the grants, the audit says. While the embassy hired more staff, Hayden said, it also had to hire a Washington-based contractor to administer the program because Afghan organizations lacked the “internal controls” required to receive direct U.S. funding. (click HERE for original article)
Keep in mind this is the same group of State Department employees who was overseeing ArmorGroup aka “Guards Gone Wild” the security subcontractor at the US Embassy in Kabul.
