Nearly half a billion dollars was spent developing a domestic intelligence capability for Afghanistan and the government has no way to know if the investment has paid off, according to the watchdog overseeing U.S. spending to rebuild the southeast Asian nation.
The Defense Department has spent $457.7 million on two programs – Legacy Afghanistan and the Afghanistan Source Operations and Management (ASOM) – intended to develop an organic intelligence capability for the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces (ANDSF).
After nearly 16 years – the United States’ longest war by far – the ANDSF is still not capable of securing its country without direct U.S. military assistance. Senate Armed Services Chairman John McCain (R-Ariz.), has harangued the Trump administration and the Obama administration before it for lacking a coherent strategy for the war. He released a statement July 31 reiterating his concern.
“More than six months after President Trump’s inauguration, there still is no strategy for success in Afghanistan,” McCain writes. “Eight years of a ‘don’t lose’ strategy has cost us lives and treasure in Afghanistan. Our troops deserve better. When the Senate takes up the National Defense Authorization Act in September, I will offer an amendment based on the advice of some our best military leaders that will provide a strategy for success in achieving America’s national interests in Afghanistan.”
But shoddy bookkeeping and insufficient metrics have meant “it is almost impossible to gauge the government’s return on investment,” according to a report published July 31 by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR).
The “programs did not fully achieve their stated objectives,” the SIGAR report says. “There was no indication of improvement in overall intelligence operations as a result of the Legacy and ASOM contracts.”
At least $314 million went to the Legacy Research and Development program alone, which did not have “adequate performance metrics or defined outcomes,” SIGAR says.
Of a total 125 Legacy and ASOM intelligence training and mentoring sites established, fewer than half were rated as being ready for full transfer to the Afghan government, SIGAR says. The remaining 66 were transferred with varying levels of capability or not transitioned.
Far less than half the trainees picked for intelligence schooling completed the prescribed regimen to operate the programs. Ten of 24 police intelligence student trainers completed all nine courses required to be a Ministry of the Interior trainer while none of the four Afghan National Army student trainers completed all six courses required to be a Ministry of Defense trainer. Of six Afghan National Army student instructors, only one completed any of the four courses required to be a Ministry of Defense instructor.
SIGAR also found that the prime contractor selected to establish the intelligence programs was overcharging the government for work and possibly filing invoices for work it was not authorized to perform. The company, Imperatis, “failed to monitor and evaluate its subcontractor costs and, therefore, misrepresented some costs as allowable when it submitted invoices,” SIGAR says. “This resulted in DOD paying for costs the U.S. government was not legally responsible to pay, thereby increasing those contracts’ costs.”
Between March and Dec. 2011, the company billed the government an average $1.8 million per month, even though the training course it was contracted to provide was canceled in February, SIGAR says.
A June 2016 DoD report, which followed the conclusion of Legacy and ASOM, noted that persistent capability gaps in the Afghan security forces’ intelligence collection and dissemination, along with other gaps, “have hampered more rapid improvement in their ability to maintain security and stability.”