US program to revive Afghan economy fails: SIGAR

Monitoring Desk

KABUL: A report by the US Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction says a program by the Defense Department of the United States has spent $675 million USD to revive the Afghan economy, but it could not provide reliable data on where the money went.

“DOD was unable to provide reliable data showing the extent to which TFBSO projects created jobs, facilitated foreign direct investments, increased exports, or increased Afghan government revenues,” the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) said in the report titled DOD Task Force for Business and Stability Operations (TFBSO).

TFBSO’s purpose was to fund business-related projects to reduce violence by encouraging Afghans to focus on economic activity rather that fighting.

However, the SIGAR report, showed the program to be inept and beyond the Defense Department’s capabilities.

“Because important documents and data were not consistently collected or retained, we could not fully assess the extent to which the $675 million obligated by TFBSO was spent effectively,” the report said.

TFBSO often had unrealistic expectations in project execution and it failed to account for local factors including politics, culture, weather, and security, SIGAR said.

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The report says that TFBSO did not clearly articulate its intended mission, objectives, and strategy until more than 2.5 years after it entered Afghanistan.

TFBSO’s lack of a strategy, coupled with the confrontational style of TFBSO’s early leadership and a lack of policy direction from State and U.S. Forces-Afghanistan (USFORA), brought it into almost immediate conflict with USAID and State, and also strained TFBSO’s early relationship with the Commander of USFOR-A.

Furthermore, TFBSO did not consistently coordinate its activities with other US government stakeholders in Afghanistan—namely State, USAID, and USFOR-A—leading to conflicting projects and wasted money.