$36.5 million worth of construction projects deemed to be "underused", according to SIGAR

According to an audit report from the Special Investigator for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), millions of dollars worth of fraudulent financial activities were detected through an investigation by the monitoring body, with multiple construction projects not being implemented as intended.

Through identifying 29 facility construction projects, originally meant as a support measure for the Afghan National Defense Forces, SIGAR selected 17 of the available projects for the purpose of this audit, establishing four categories on the basis of the observed usage or implementation of the selected projects. These categories include:

• Mostly Used as Intended: “projects where at least half of the major facilities are used to at least 25 percent of its capacity”, as described in the report.
• Unused: “projects that are unoccupied and never used”.
• Mostly Unused: “projects where less than half of the major facilities are used to at least 25 percent of its capacity”.
• Not Used as Intended: “projects where the facilities are used”, but not for the sole original purpose of the project itself.

Of the 17 projects being audited, SIGAR found 6 projects that had never been used, 5 projects were mostly unused, 3 were “not being used as intended”, and only 3 projects were “mostly used as intended”; with the 14 projects not being effectively utilised costing as much as $36.5 million.

Furthermore, SIGAR detected through its comprehensive audit that six projects which were meant to support women in the Afghan National Defense Forces, which included multiple training centers in Jalalabad, Herat and Kabul - amounting to $24.2 million.

The United States has allocated over $132 billion into Afghanistan in the form of reconstruction funds, and as revealed in the "Afghanistan Papers" by the Washington Post, which compiled hundreds of internal audits being conducted by SIGAR, startling amounts of funds were reportedly wasted, stolen and under-utilised - mainly due to corruption.