{"id":1846,"date":"2013-07-11T16:32:26","date_gmt":"2013-07-11T22:32:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/?p=1846"},"modified":"2013-07-11T16:33:38","modified_gmt":"2013-07-11T22:33:38","slug":"u-s-wastes-millions-on-base-in-afghanistan-it-will-never-use","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/u-s-wastes-millions-on-base-in-afghanistan-it-will-never-use\/","title":{"rendered":"U.S. Wastes Millions On Base In Afghanistan It Will Never Use"},"content":{"rendered":"

by\u00a0Hayes Brown<\/a>, Think Progress
\nclick here for original article<\/a><\/p>\n

The United States military spent millions of dollars on a shining new command center in the Helmand province of Afghanistan \u2014 a center that will never be used and is now likely to be completely demolished.<\/p>\n

A\u00a0new letter<\/a>\u00a0out on Wednesday from the Special Inspector-General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) criticizes the construction of the $34 million base, which appears to be the result of an extremely expensive lack of communication within the Department of Defense. According to the letter, a senior military official told SIGAR\u2019s John Sopko that the facility was designed for a military division that never deployed and \u201csubsequently, a decision was made not to construct the facility, but inexplicably the building construction started and is now complete.\u201d<\/p>\n

Spreading out over 64,000 square feet, the building was designed for maximum of 1,500 staff, and includes a war room, briefing theatre, and offices for senior military officers including a three-star general. Unfortunately, by the time the project was nearly completed, the\u00a0surge of Marines<\/a>\u00a0in the south of Afghanistan that convinced Pentagon officials that such a command center would be needed dropped from 20,000 to around 7,000. Today, only 450 people may be able to use the building, which Sopko warns would result in \u201cexcessive operation and maintenance costs because the cooling systems would be underutilized.\u201d So at present, the building instead stands\u00a0empty and unused<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Washington Post\u00a0profiled the base<\/a>\u00a0on Wednesday as well, calling attention to the fact that nobody actually stationed in Helmand wanted the center to be constructed in the first place. Three yeas ago, according to the Post, the top Marine commander there told U.S. headquarters in Kabul that the new base was \u201cunnecessary\u201d and too opulent in its design, saying his plywood-walled headquarters at Camp Leatherneck were more that sufficient to support the incoming surge of Marines. \u201cWhat the hell were they thinking?\u201d an Army general is quoted as asking. \u201cThere was never any justification to build something this fancy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite it being handed over to the U.S. government in Nov. 2012, the building still isn\u2019t completely finished. Another $1-2 million worth of communications equipment is still needed within the base to make it fully operational, the result of the project finally being called off this spring. Military officials told Sopko that the command center is an \u201cexample of what is wrong with military construction in general \u2014once a project is started, it is very difficult to stop.\u201d The Washington Post also highlighted similar projects, including a $45 million facility to repair armored vehicles that is now being used solely to sort through equipment being\u00a0shipped out of the country<\/a>, and $80 million spent on a State Department consulate building that was then abandoned as too vulnerable to attacks.<\/p>\n

Making matters worse, the building can\u2019t simply be turned over to the Afghans once U.S. combat troops\u00a0depart at the end of 2014<\/a>. The project was built to support American construction standards, rather than Afghan, making it physically incompatible with the Afghan power grid without a costly overhaul. In addition, the cost of maintaining such a facility would also likely be far more than the Afghan government would be willing to commit. The result: the building in all its shining grandeur will likely be demolished having never been put to its intended use.<\/p>\n

The waste\u00a0seen in Afghanistan<\/a>\u00a0has been\u00a0staggering<\/a>\u00a0and a sign that\u00a0lessons from the reconstruction projects<\/a>\u00a0in Iraq have so far gone unheeded in Afghanistan. The Special Inspector-General for Iraq Reconstruction on Tuesday testified before the House Subcommittee on the Middle East and North Africa for the final time, laying out just how problematic \u201cbuilding the plane in flight\u201d as seen in Iraq and Afghanistan has been. In response, SIGIR Stuart Bowen has\u00a0called for Congress<\/a>\u00a0to establish a U.S. Office of Contingency Operations whose sole job would be to plan for the sort of reconstruction projects seen in the last decade.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by\u00a0Hayes Brown, Think Progress click here for original article The United States military spent millions of dollars on a shining new command center in the Helmand province of Afghanistan \u2014 a center that will never be used and is now likely to be completely demolished. A\u00a0new letter\u00a0out on Wednesday from the Special Inspector-General for Afghanistan […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1848,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1846","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/helmand-base-fail-e1373463434862.jpg?fit=151%2C214&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1846","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1846"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1846\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1849,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1846\/revisions\/1849"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1848"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1846"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1846"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1846"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}