Earlier this year, the U.S. Agency for International Development pulled the plug on the Community Stabilization Program, a jobs and public works program for Iraq worth a whopping $644 million.
The program was supposed to keep young (read: fighting-age) men away from the insurgency by putting them to work or enrolling them in vocational programs. But while thousands of Iraqis were paid to pick up trash or paint T-walls, the program was also susceptible to fraud: In a March 2008 audit, the USAID inspector general in Baghdad expressed concern that millions of dollars may have been siphoned off by insurgents.
Which brings us to Afghanistan. International Relief and Development -- the Beltway bandit implementing partner that ran the Community Stabilization Program -- is now busy at work in Afghanistan, overseeing roadbuilding projects and agriculture programs.
Appearing Tuesday at the U.S. Institute of Peace, IRD President and CEO Arthur Keys defended the Community Stabilization Program, saying the reason that the reason the program was so large -- at one point, it had a "burn rate" of around $1 million a day -- was that it was tackling such a big problem. (Other USAID partners declined to bid on the project because of concerns about its enormous scope and worries about accountability.) Keys even has a stockroom full of documents to prove how noble IRD's intentions were.
"I can assure you there was nothing called a managed cash drop," Keys said. "I welcome all of you to come to our records, the warehouse that we have in Amman, Jordan, that's three stories high, it has all of the audit and on-the-book documents there, and as any of you who work with AID know, they didn't change the standards."
Of course, just because you can produce a lot of records doesn't mean you're running a program properly. IRD is the very same organization that fired an Afghan employee for having the temerity to suggest that they reconsider their policy of having segregated dining facilities for the natives locals in their Kabul office. Securing multi-million-dollar contracts may be IRD's strong suit; cultural sensitivity ain't.
As Joanna Nathan recently warned at ForeignPolicy.com, the U.S. government's business-as-usual approach of outsourcing development work could have very negative consequences for the mission in Afghanistan.
"If gaudy new mansions built in the local 'narco-tecture' style are rented for thousands a month by U.S. contractors, UN agencies, foreign embassies and even rule of law projects, what does that say of the Western commitment to accountability?" she wrote. "For it is important to recognize that when Afghans speak of 'corruption,' they may mean perfectly legal actions under the direct auspices of foreign donors. When they hear of billions of dollars being spent in Afghanistan via private contractors only to often see much of the money lost in layer after layer of subcontracting and little real effect on the ground, that is labeled corruption whatever signed contracts there may be."
And when Afghans see the relatives of government ministers getting fat off of foreign aid contracts, Nathan added, "they get angry."
After months of being leaderless, USAID may now have a new administrator: Josh Rogin reports at The Cable that the White House has picked Rajiv Shah, the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Under Secretary for Research, Education and Economics and Chief Scientist, to head up the agency. First thing Dr. Shah might want to do if he is confirmed is check to see who's been minding the store.
[PHOTO: U.S. Department of Defense]
