US Funding The Taliban?

[Richard]

USAID probes the possibility that contractors give a cut of upwards of 20% of US provided reconstruction funds to the Taliban for protection.

And so it goes...

Richard's $.02

Are US Taxpayers Funding The Taliban?
Jean MacKenzie, GlobalPost, 2 Sep 2009

The United States Agency for International Development has opened an investigation into allegations that its funds for road and bridge construction in Afghanistan are ending up in the hands of the Taliban, through a protection racket for contractors.

And House Foreign Affairs Committee member, Rep. Bill Delahunt (D-Mass.) vowed to hold hearings on the issue in the fall, saying: "The idea that American taxpayer dollars are ending up with the Taliban is a case for grave concern."

U.S. officials confirmed that the preliminary investigation and the proposed hearings were sparked by a GlobalPost special report on the funding of the Taliban last month that uncovered a process that has been an open secret in Afghanistan for years among those in international aid organizations.

The report exposed that the Taliban takes a percentage of the billions of dollars in aid from U.S. and other international coalition members that goes to large organizations and their subcontractors for development projects, in exchange for protection in remote areas controlled by the insurgency.

“We are looking into this. We are always interested in fraud, waste and abuse,” said Dona Dinkler, the chief of staff for congressional affairs at USAID’s Office of Inspector General in Washington, D.C.

But, she added: “It’s a real hard thing to prove. Who is going to survive to testify about that? That is our challenge. But that doesn’t mean we stop trying. We want to get to the bottom of it.”

The USAID probe is underway in tandem with an inquiry by the U.S. House of Representatives' Foreign Affairs Committee, whose members have raised concerns in recent years about fraud and abuse in the $7.5 billion in funds marked for Afghanistan between 2002 and this year.

"It's our intention this fall to hold public hearings on it. We will pursue this with vigor," said committee member Delahunt.

Delahunt said the allegations made in the story reveal a lack of oversight of U.S. government spending in Afghanistan that he described as a legacy of the previous administration in Washington. He said more resources were needed to be brought to routing out this kind of corruption.

USAID’s Inspector General has only one investigator in Afghanistan and two auditors tracking the billions of tax payers’ dollars that go to NGOs in that troubled country.

“They want to know what [we are] going to do about this,” said an official at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, adding that the goal of the probe at this point is to determine how extensive the problem is, and how it can be tracked.

As part of a special report called "Life, Death and the Taliban," GlobalPost traced a web of financial connections between major international contractors and the Taliban in which the insurgents provide protection — largely from themselves — in return for a healthy cut of the proceeds. One source, with direct knowledge of such payments, estimated the Taliban can take upwards of 20 percent from many contracts awarded in unstable areas, which would include about half of the country.

When the money is not paid out, then bridges get blown up, engineers get kidnapped and projects tend to stall, according to sources quoted in the story.

“It’s organized crime,” sighed the embassy official, who spoke on the condition that his name would not be used. “It’s insidious.”

It is also going to be very difficult to establish, let alone control. Most of the monetary transactions take place at a sub-contractor level, invisible to balance sheets or oversight committees. Any records that are kept are not likely to make their way into the U.S. government accounting system.

As GlobalPost reported, the Taliban allegedly receives kickbacks from almost every major contract that comes into the country. The arrangements are at times highly formalized and, as GlobalPost spelled out, the Taliban actually keeps an office in Kabul to review major deals, determine percentages and conduct negotiations. The arrangements are often more personal, as when a local supplier pays off a small-time Taliban commander to allow free passage of goods through his patch of insurgency-controlled terrain.

Precise amounts are almost impossible to pin down, but it is, according to those knowledgeable of the process, a conservative estimate that the amount going to the Taliban is in the tens of millions of dollars a year. If the allegation that the Taliban takes 20 percent off big contracts is true, it is possible the Taliban is receiving as much money from the billions of dollars in assistance funds as it does from what traditionally has been its leading source of income: drugs.

With the poppy crop reported to be down this year in Afghanistan and the Afghan and U.S. government boasting of successful interdiction of the crop which fuels what the U.N. has estimated in the past to be a $4 billion a year heroin trade in Afghanistan, U.S. intelligence officials say the Taliban is seeking other sources of funding.

U.S. Special Envoy Richard Holbrooke has recently asked the Treasury Department to look into the matter of Taliban funding, and has stated publicly that opium and heroin most likely account for far less of the Taliban budget than had previously been thought.

In Afghanistan — the world’s fifth most corrupt government on the Transparency International index — few would raise an eyebrow at graft. Contracts in the relatively stable north of Afghanistan are subject to just as many kickbacks as in Helmand or Kandahar; the difference, according to the embassy official, is the end recipient and the use to which they put the proceeds.

“Warlords take the money (in northern Afghanistan),” the source said. “But they are not using it to buy guns to kill our soldiers.”

As the largest international donor, the United States is the major source of such funding, but it is by no means the only one. In an upcoming article, Time magazine outlines similar types of pay-offs to the Taliban in Kunduz, in northern Afghanistan, which is now experiencing a major increase in insurgent activity. The contracts belonged to GTZ, a German aid organization, but the procedures were very much the same as with USAID-funded projects.

With the practice so widespread, it is a wonder to many, including USAID’s own internal sources, how it has taken so long for it to come to light. The problem, say longtime observers, is partially the fortress in which USAID, the U.S. embassy and other international aid organizations live and work.

“[These people] really had very little idea of how Afghanistan operates,” said a USAID contractor who spent several weeks in Helmand province. “[They] could have as easily been working in an office in Washington as Lashkar Gah. Although some of them had been there for three years, they had had almost no contact with Afghans except for the cooks and cleaners. So, they have no ears to the ground.”

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/a...aliban-funding

[Richard]

Even more than suspected - $$B in DOD transport protectionist fees paid to the Taliban.

And so it goes...

Richard's jaded $.02

How the US Funds the Taliban
Aram Roston, Nation, 30 Nov 2009

<snip>

In this grotesque carnival, the US military's contractors are forced to pay suspected insurgents to protect American supply routes. It is an accepted fact of the military logistics operation in Afghanistan that the US government funds the very forces American troops are fighting. And it is a deadly irony, because these funds add up to a huge amount of money for the Taliban. "It's a big part of their income," one of the top Afghan government security officials told The Nation in an interview. In fact, US military officials in Kabul estimate that a minimum of 10 percent of the Pentagon's logistics contracts--hundreds of millions of dollars--consists of payments to insurgents.

<snip>

"Most escorting is done by the Taliban," an Afghan private security official told me. He's a Pashto and former mujahedeen commander who has his finger on the pulse of the military situation and the security industry. And he works with one of the trucking companies carrying US supplies. "Now the government is so weak," he added, "everyone is paying the Taliban."

<snip>

The Afghan intelligence service even offered a solution: what if the United States were to take the tens of millions paid to security contractors and instead set up a dedicated and professional convoy support unit to guard its logistics lines? The suggestion went nowhere.

The bizarre fact is that the practice of buying the Taliban's protection is not a secret. I asked Col. David Haight, who commands the Third Brigade of the Tenth Mountain Division, about it. After all, part of Highway 1 runs through his area of operations. What did he think about security companies paying off insurgents? "The American soldier in me is repulsed by it," he said in an interview in his office at FOB Shank in Logar Province. "But I know that it is what it is: essentially paying the enemy, saying, 'Hey, don't hassle me.' I don't like it, but it is what it is."

As a military official in Kabul explained contracting in Afghanistan overall, "We understand that across the board 10 percent to 20 percent goes to the insurgents. My intel guy would say it is closer to 10 percent. Generally it is happening in logistics."

<snip>

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20091130/roston

[DinDinA-2]

....“But they are not using it to buy guns to kill our soldiers.”

What do the warlords do with their money then...new additions to their summer homes? Update their wardrobes?

Originally Posted by DinDinA-2

....“But they are not using it to buy guns to kill our soldiers.”

What do the warlords do with their money then...new additions to their summer homes? Update their wardrobes?

Nicely put. The "source" seems ignorant of a fundamental economic concept. Money is fungible.

[greenberetTFS]

Originally Posted by DinDinA-2

....“But they are not using it to buy guns to kill our soldiers.”

What do the warlords do with their money then...new additions to their summer homes? Update their wardrobes?

Exactly,The guy who wrote this has got to be living on another planet!........

Big Teddy

[Richard]

....“But they are not using it to buy guns to kill our soldiers.”

Where did that quote come from - it wasn't from the posted article.

Richard

Originally Posted by Richard

Where did that quote come from - it wasn't from the posted article.

Richard

Hmmm. I found it both in post #1 of this thread and on page two of the article as published on the Global Post web site. For the post in our thread, look at the 4th from the last paragraph.

“Warlords take the money (in northern Afghanistan),” the source said. “But they are not using it to buy guns to kill our soldiers.”

Per my Find function in FireFox.

[Richard]

I was only searching my follow-on post re:the bribing of the Taliban for security of our convoys and not the September post which was 'olde' news. My error. Thanks.

Richard

[Marina]

OK, somebody tell me why are we "reconstructing" before we annihilate the enemy? Sounds like an endless mess.

How naive. The next thing you know they'll find corruption in government.

[Pete]

Originally Posted by Marina

OK, somebody tell me why are we "reconstructing" before we annihilate the enemy? ...............

We had to build the road before they could destroy it.................

An old phrase with a new twist.

[Dozer523]

Originally Posted by Marina

OK, somebody tell me why are we "reconstructing" before we annihilate the enemy? Sounds like an endless mess.

How naive. The next thing you know they'll find corruption in government.

Well that "annihilate the enemy" thing hasn't been going so good. We never really adopted a scorched earth policy, anyway. And that didn't go so good for the last guys who tried it, anyway.