SIGAR Report on Relief and Reconstruction

On Monday the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction released the final report for 2011. These reports are mandated by law and must be delivered to Congress each quarter. The report covers the time period that marked 10 years since the US assault in October of 2001 and carries the tag line '10 years of reconstruction 2001-2011'.

Of particular interest is the fact that 61% of the money articulated for relief and reconstruction is actually spent on funding, arming and training government forces, private militias, and undercover units that operate along the border with Pakistan.

The report confirms that 98,933 U.S. forces remained in the country at year’s end.

It does not dwell on the Afghan government demands to disband the failed military-led Provisional Reconstruction Teams linking US military strategy with development and reconstruction, or the Afghan government demand that armed private security firms be disbanded.

Nevertheless, these are authoritative figures on what the US is actually spending resources on in Afghanistan. You can see from the chart above that all assistance for humanitarian relief will be eliminated in 2012.

The chart graphically shows the growing dependance on exclusive military priorities over the years.

For this year 88% will be military.

Simply appalling and immoral.

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I added the percentages in brackets for the text below lifted from the report.

SIGAR – 2011 Final Report - Some Figures

As of December 31, 2011, the United States had appropriated nearly $85.54 billion for relief and reconstruction in Afghanistan since FY 2002. This total has been approximately allocated as follows:

• $52.14 billion for security (61%)
• $20.28 billion for governance and development (24%)
• $5.67 billion for counter-narcotics efforts (7%)
• $2.24 billion for humanitarian aid (3%)
• $5.20 billion for oversight and operations (6%)

US Troop Levels – 31 December 2012

According to U.S. Forces - Afghanistan (USFOR-A), 98,933 U.S. forces were serving in the country as of December 31, 2011.

• 71,742 to ISAF
• 2,780 to NTM-A/CSTC-A
• 14,565 to USFOR-A
• 9,846 to other assignments (CENTCOM)

Additional Resources:

Eisenhower Research Project | War Costs $4 Trillion

3 Cents on the Dollar

We Meant Well | Peter Van Buren

We Meant Well, is an insider account of the civilian side of the surge in Iraq. The challenges and failures should be lessons for Afghanistan.

Of course there are differences; major UN agencies and well funded international NGO’s remain active in Afghanistan, and the country is one of the poorest in the world. However.

The odious role of military-controlled reconstruction teams linking humanitarian and development assistance to a military strategy is the same for both countries. As in Iraq, these opposing efforts led to confusion and resentment, becoming band-aids, symbolic measures to mitigate the destruction of escalating military action.

This book, and reports from many NGO’s on-the-ground make a clear call to end the military's role in development.

Here are the questions for Afghanistan. Will the U.S. learn these lessons as the military surge winds down in Afghanistan? Is it possible to offer transparent and sustained support to Afghan governmental and nongovernmental institutions seeking to heal the wounds of war?

We Meant Well:
How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People
By: Peter Van Buren

“From a State Department insider, the first book recounting our misguided efforts to rebuild Iraq—a shocking and rollicking true-life cross between Catch-22, Dispatches and The Ugly American.

Charged with rebuilding Iraq, would you spend taxpayer money on a sports mural in Baghdad’s most dangerous neighborhood to promote reconciliation through art? How about an isolated milk factory that cannot get its milk to market? Or a pastry class training women to open cafés on bombed-out streets without water or electricity?

According to Peter Van Buren, we bought all these projects and more in the most expensive hearts-and-minds campaign since the Marshall Plan. We Meant Well is his eyewitness account of the civilian side of the surge—that surreal and bollixed attempt to defeat terrorism and win over Iraqis by reconstructing the world we had just destroyed. Leading a State Department Provincial Reconstruction Team on its quixotic mission, Van Buren details, with laser-like irony, his yearlong encounter with pointless projects, bureaucratic fumbling, overwhelmed soldiers, and oblivious administrators secluded in the world’s largest embassy, who fail to realize that you can’t rebuild a country without first picking up the trash.

Darkly funny while deadly serious, We Meant Well is a tragicomic voyage of ineptitude and corruption that leaves its writer—and readers—appalled and disillusioned but wiser.”

Additional Resources:

Democracy Now: State Department Veteran Defies U.S. Censors to Recount Failed Reconstruction in Iraq

Book Reviews:

Afghanistan: Shining a Light on the Dark

More than $1.6 billion from the US and at least 14 other countries has been spent on energy projects since 2002

Yet after years of reconstruction efforts, no other country in the world has less electricity per person that Afghanistan.

This interactive study by the Associated Press has graphics and video that explains what went wrong.

Powers of Darkness in North Afghanistan
By Abdul Latif Sahak | Institute for War and Peace Reporting | 5 July 2011

Although the northern Afghan city of Mazar-e Sharif enjoys a measure of stability and a conveniently-located source of electricity, residents say they are only getting a couple of hours of power a day.

Apart from making life more difficult in the summer heat, the power outages have led to fears of infection due to problems with keeping foodstuffs cool.

Residents are angered that the massive amounts of aid money injected into Afghanistan has failed to improve electricity supplies, a basic building-block of economic development.

People in Mazar-e Sharif get between one and three hours of electricity every 24 hours. IWPR interviewed one man, Fereidun, who said he had an hour a day, but with a current so weak that it would not run his refrigerator.

“You see, I can’t bear this hot weather even though I’m an adult. How can children bear it?” Fereidun said, fanning himself as he sat under a tree in front of his house. “I use this fan on my children all night. Sometimes I even pass out. If there was electricity, I wouldn’t have these problems, as I own [an electric] fan and a refrigerator.”

Fereidun placed the blame squarely on local government, saying, “For God’s sake, every government official in the province has been working for the last ten years as if he inherited his post. If they can’t work, others must replace them.”