Well before George W. Bush declared "Mission Accomplished," American GIs found steel boxes full of $100 bills walled up in houses on the grounds of one of Saddam Hussein's many palaces. All told, it amounted to $700 million. A year later, $140 million of that money was being spent by the Pentagon on humanitarian projects in Iraq and $40 million in Afghanistan under the so-called Commanders Emergency Response Program. The money was seen by the military as ammo in the war to win hearts and minds in the midst of two insurgencies, all of it being used for health care, education, agriculture, telecommunications, roads, food distribution and similar items, none of it military and none of it directed toward private businesses.
Since then, some $5 billion, including $1.2 billion in Afghanistan, has gone to CERP. Time after time, the Government Accountability Office has reported serious deficiencies in the program, including inadequate numbers of personnel, poor training, failed oversight, unvetted contracts leading to payments for work that was badly done or not done not at all, and no clear objectives. But the military still views CERP as a "critical" tool in its counterinsurgency operations, according to a statement issued by a Pentagon spokesman to the Washington Post. The government is preparing to write another $1.3 billion check for CERP, with all but $200 million of it for Afghanistan.
But a two-part story by Ernesto Londoño and Josh Boak in the Post adds to CERP's reputation as an inadequately thought-out, poorly supervised program with dubious outcomes. Once the individual projects are turned over to Iraqi and Afghan control, they quickly deteriorate.
There's the million-dollar water slide in Baghdad, shuttered after less than two years, looted playgrounds, and an outdoor concert hall that consumed $250,000 but for which ground was never broken. One report said CERP spending had helped reduce violence in Iraq, but even some commanders on the ground say they can't verify that. One big problem is that Iraqi officials provided little input into many projects, especially smaller ones. As any good manager can tell you, no input, no buy-in. Combine no buy-in with no oversight and the results aren't hard to guess. But CERP spending in Iraq has apparently worked better than in Afghanistan:
The dilapidated projects in Afghanistan could present a challenge to the U.S. strategy of shifting more responsibility to Afghans. Investing in infrastructure, notes President Obama's December review of the war, "will give the Afghan government and people the tools to build and sustain a future of stability."
"Sustainment is one of the biggest issues with our whole strategy," said a civilian official who shared details from a draft of the report. "The Afghans don't have the money or capacity to sustain much." The official spoke on the condition of anonymity because the Defense Department is preparing a response to the audit.
Photos in the report show washed-out roads, with cracks and potholes where improvised explosive devices can be hidden. Among the projects profiled is a re-dredged canal that filled with silt a month after opening.
An audit in 2009 found that there is no effort by the Pentagon to see if projects turned over to Afghan control are maintained. It also found that local Afghan leaders are not clear on exactly what they are supposed to maintain. Moreover, they have no local funds for doing so and depend on the central government for the money that often makes, uh, let's be charitable and call it a "circuitous" route to local communities. Whether enough funds reach certain areas often depends on their demonstrated loyalty to Kabul.
Since it appears, infuriatingly, that the U.S. military is going to remain in Afghanistan for at least many years, CERP - which does have some things to recommend it - needs more than the tweaking around the edges it has received so far. For one thing, Afghanistan is not Iraq. If CERP-funded projects are going to be operated and maintained well, funding needs to be set aside to train local Afghans who have bought into those projects on how to keep them going. And some means must be found to pay long term for that operation and maintenance in a country with modest resources. Otherwise, they are going to become just more junk littering the countryside like rusted Soviet tanks.