$34 Million For Unused Building In Afghanistan

The Office of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction sent a letter to the Secretary of Defense and the U.S. Army indicating that $34 million was spent on command headquarters in Helmand that was never occupied and should have been stopped. Here are some excerpts:

• "I was told by senior U.S. military officials that the recently completed Regional CommandSouthwest (RC-SW) Command and Control Facility, a 64,000 square feet building and related infrastructure with a contract award value of $34 million that was meant to serve as a command headquarters in Helmand to support the surge, will not be occupied. Based on documents provided to SIGAR, it appears that military commanders in Afghanistan determined as early as May 2010 that there was no need for the facility, yet the military still moved ahead with the construction project and continued to purchase equipment and make various improvements to the building in early 2013. Based on these preliminary findings, I am deeply troubled that the military may have spent taxpayer funds on a construction project that should have been stopped."
• "In addition, I was told that U.S. military officials expect that the building will be either demolished or turned over to the Afghan government as our military presence in Afghanistan declines and Camp Leatherneck is reduced in size. Both alternatives for how to resolve this issue are troubling—destroying a never-occupied and never-used building or turning over what may be a “white elephant” to the Afghan government that it may not have the capacity to sustain. Determining all of the facts on how we reached this $34 million dilemma and what can be done to prevent it from happening again is the reason for sending this management alert letter to you."

Click here to see an extensive list of other examples of government waste in Afghanistan.