Courtesy of the U.S. Congress, Afghan security forces are slated to receive a total of $15.3 billion in new gear. Problem is, Combined Security Transition Command-Afghanistan (CSTC-A), which is overseeing the effort to train and equip the Afghans, has failed to track a lot of the equipment that has been purchased to date.
According to a newly released report from the Pentagon's Inspector General, CSTC-A failed to maintain complete property records for vehicles and radios recently purchased for the ANA -- meaning there was no way to check that they were in the right hands. "CSTC-A had not effectively implemented receiving and inventory controls to ensure accountability for all vehicles and radios purchased for the ANA," the report states. "As a result, DoD [the Department of Defense] has no assurance that vehicles and radios purchased for the ANA were received or that ANA units received the quantity or type of vehicles ordered."
Part of the problem was tracking VIN numbers for the new trucks. Once they were delivered, vehicles were parked in a motor pool, and vehicle VIN numbers were entered into a contractor's unofficial spreadsheet. Those numbers, however, never made it into the official inventory system.
The same thing happened with radios. Depot staff received the radios with their packing slips, but failed to check the contents of the delivery or record serial numbers. When auditors tried to track down the vehicles and radios, they could not locate 84 of 213 vehicles whose VIN numbers they selected from CSTC-A property records; likewise, they could not locate 627 of the 1,034 radios they selected for tracking.
That doesn't mean that there is foul play, but it does create the potential for waste, misuse or theft. As we reported earlier, Pentagon assessment teams have also found serious flaws in the system for tracking small arms shipments to Afghanistan's security forces.
The IG states the blindingly obvious: "Greater efforts to improve accountability for vehicles and radios from receipt in Afghanistan through transfer to the ANA will avoid the use of scarce ASF [Afghan Security Forces] funds for replacement purchases [and] minimize loss of sensitive equipment to criminal elements." Um, yeah.
[PHOTO: U.S. Department of Defense]
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