After troops leave, U.S. to lose access to Afghan reconstruction projects worth billions [View all]

[ourfuneral]

Source: The Washington Post

As coalition forces withdraw from Afghanistan, U.S.-funded reconstruction projects worth billions of dollars in far-flung regions of the country will soon be impossible for American officials to safely visit and directly inspect.

The planned removal of more than 40,000 troops and the closure of dozens of bases over the next year will shrink the protective umbrella for U.S. officials to keep tabs on construction work, training programs and other initiatives in the corruption-plagued nation. Only about 20 percent of the country will be accessible to U.S. civilian oversight personnel in 2014, according to an analysis conducted by the special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction and obtained by The Washington Post.

Instead of curtailing those projects, the Pentagon, the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development plan to rely on teams of private contractors to monitor the work of other private contractors on the taxpayer-funded projects. In a document soliciting firms to help with inspections, USAID said it also intends to use satellite photos and “crowdsourcing” experiments that will solicit feedback on progress from Afghans who are supposed to benefit from U.S.-financed work.

The inability of U.S. government personnel to inspect development projects is prompting worry among lawmakers and government inspectors that millions more dollars could be squandered in what has become the costliest reconstruction of a single country in American history.

“I would be shocked if this doesn’t have an unhappy ending,” said Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), who has been critical of reconstruction programs in Afghanistan and Iraq. “They are kissing oversight goodbye.”

Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/after-troops-leave-us-to-lose-access-to-afghan-reconstruction-projects-worth-billions/2013/10/26/5a9212a6-3d9c-11e3-b6a9-da62c264f40e_story.html?hpid=z1

---

The clusterfuck continues.