Afghan commando camp rife with problems, watchdog says

A $57 million military base paid for by the U.S. Defense Department for use by Afghan commandos and troops has gone over budget by several million dollars, is plagued with broken generators and will require an additional $3 million to be finished, a report by the government agency investigating reconstruction projects in Afghanistan has revealed.

The findings are the latest in a long list of reported failures, misreporting and mismanagement regarding U.S. spending on reconstruction projects in Afghanistan.

In its report Thursday on Camp Commando in Kabul, the U.S. Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, also known as SIGAR, cited inspections of the base in February and November last year that found a litany of problems.

The DOD established the camp in Kabul to house the Afghan National Army's Special Operations headquarters, as well as a commando school, a military intelligence unit and garrison support for the army.

SIGAR’s report focused on the camp's power plant, fuel pump and dining facility — and found problems with all of them.

“We found that all three facilities inspected … generally appeared to be well constructed, but a complete inspection was not possible because neither the power plant nor the fuel point were fully operating,” SIGAR said in its report.

Despite deficiencies in the facilities being unresolved, the contractors — both Afghan and American — were paid in full.

Only one of the four primary generators could operate at a time because of a software synchronization issue. And because the system couldn't automatically switch from one generator to the next it all had to be done manually, wasting time and resources.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said that it agreed with SIGAR’s findings, but that none of the shortfalls warranted disciplinary action. It blamed the power problems on Afghan troops, saying that about two years ago someone in the Afghan army had damaged the transformers by improperly connecting them.

Instead of trying to fix the transformers, the camp used 19 generators to compensate for the drop in electricity. But even this was met with problems, as some of the generators needed repairs.

SIGAR also noted that its site inspections “confirmed that fuel pumps were not operating and had not been tested and commissioned.” Because of that, it said, the Army Corps of Engineers has not been able to check the systems for deficiencies, including whether there were leaks or problems with the pump nozzle system.

The Army Corps of Engineers insisted the fuel pumps had been tested and commissioned, but it did not provide supporting evidence. It said the pumps had never been programmed, so they could not be used to pump fuel.

Even the dining facility was inadequate. Originally slated to feed 280 people, the hall now serves some 1,600 troops. “To help better serve the number of people using the dining facility, the Camp commander told us that he built an addition onto the kitchen for cooking only rice,” SIGAR said.

SIGAR has recently catalogued a number of projects that may have squandered money, reporting on the inability of U.S. government agencies to find any successes in its programs designed to aid Afghan women. It also found that Afghan troops had an oversupply of weapons and trouble tracking their shipments.

SIGAR recently investigated a $3 million food-storage facility that was never used and a faltering $34 million initiative to develop a market for soybeans, which are not traditionally farmed or eaten by Afghans.

The sum for the U.S. war in Afghanistan now tops $100 billion, and will likely grow as the U.S. continues to foot the bill for the Afghan security forces and pours money into redevelopment projects.