Lack of oversight of United States Agency for International Development (USAID) contractors in Afghanistan is not a new story.
But
when all eight USAID contractors in Afghanistan who had been called in
for a roundtable meeting with Sen. Claire McCaskill earlier this month
said they do not have to file any documents with USAID for the
multi-million-dollar projects they are working on, even the senator was
surprised.
"I knew USAID wasn't excited about SPOT filing," she said at the Feb. 3
roundtable meeting of the Senate Subcommittee on Contracting Oversight.
"But I didn't know they were this unexcited."
In 2008, USAID, the State and Defence Departments signed a
memorandum of understanding agreeing that the Synchronised
Predeployment and Operational Tracker, or SPOT, would be the system of
record.
However, representatives of the organisations present at the
roundtable meeting said their contracts with USAID did not include a
clause on having to file SPOT documents.
As late as November last year, the Government Accountability Office
found that USAID does not require SPOT documents from its contractors
in Afghanistan and has no time frame for doing so.
The roundtable had invited Black & Veatch, Creative
Associates International, Chemonics International, Inc., Deloitte &
Touche (BearingPoint), Development Alternatives, Inc., International
Relief and Development Inc., International Resources Group, and the
Louis Berger Group.
Among those present, all except the Louis Berger Group report
exclusively to USAID. Louis Berger also reports to a private
contractor.
The information the agencies were required to track as part of
SPOT includes a brief description of the contract, its total value, and
whether it was awarded competitively, and for contractor personnel
working under contracts in Iraq or Afghanistan, the total number
employed, total number performing security functions, and total number
who have been killed or wounded.
The three government entities have different requirements for a SPOT filing when it comes to Afghanistan.
USAID, and the two cabinet departments, had said in November that they
lack the resources to verify the information reported by the
contractors, particularly for work performed at remote sites where
security conditions make it difficult for U.S. government officials to
regularly visit.
The lack of coordination between USAID and its contractors was
also clear during the meeting of the Senate Subcommittee on Contracting
Oversight in February.
The contractors told McCaskill that USAID officials do not visit the
sites, which are usually "outside the wire" of security zones, and
preferred to follow up on their work by e-mail from embassy compounds
or bases. The USAID officials do not get outside the wire as much as
they historically did, said Dick McCall, senior vice president of
Creative Associates.
USAID and the State Department have been sending more and more civilian
officers to track the progress of development work in Afghanistan, as
part of its new civil-military strategy.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced that there could
be as many as 1,500 civilian officers in the war-torn country by 2011.
But most of the civilian surge occurs inside the security zones, said
James Boomgard, president and CEO of Development Alternatives, Inc. And
so supervision of work and interaction with USAID officials occurs only
irregularly, he said.
Lack of adequately trained local staff is also hindering development
work in Afghanistan, where, compared to Iraq, the ratio of expatriates
in development projects is higher.
The panelists also told McCaskill that many USAID officials in
Afghanistan are inexperienced. Those who are new to Afghanistan "tend
to set unrealistic expectations" for contractors, Boomgard said.
The contractors said that this meant that government officials were
unable to see the successes, failures, and challenges of the projects
and can't carry out quality oversight work. The contractors also
acknowledged understaffing problems at USAID, a result of budget cuts
over the last decade.
According to Dick Owens of International relief and
Development, Inc., the contractors are now expected to work "behind the
clearing", or where troops have not yet secured the area. That
increases the risks and slows down activity, he said.
One result is that years after the projects were supposed to be completed, there is little information on their status.
McCaskill, who is currently on a week-long trip to visit troops
overseas, including in Afghanistan, questioned why contractors were not
more successful in implementing their economic, infrastructure and
education projects even after being in the war-torn country for a long
time, sometimes decades.
USAID is not the only government agency that has failed to
keep up with the oversight process. In a report in June last year, the
federal Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan said
that neither the military nor the federal civilian workforces have
expanded to keep pace with the enormous growth in the number and value
of contingency contracts in recent years.
It pointed out how contracting officials withhold provisions
recommended by auditors, and many contract audit recommendations are
not properly resolved.
Many of the contractors who met with McCaskill have a bad track record
of implementing projects. Maryland-based Development Alternatives, Inc.
(DAI) was cited by the Inspector General's office in January for
ineffective use of USAID funds in tribal regions of Pakistan over the
last year.
A 2009 report from the Inspector General criticised DAI's performance
on a 164-million-dollar contract to promote local governance. Success,
the audit found, was "highly questionable" in part because DAI "had no
overall strategy" for implementing local projects.
DAI continues to receive USAID funds for projects in both Iraq and Afghanistan.
The Louis Berger Group isn't free from controversy either. It
is one of the contractors of the 300-million-dollar power plant project
in Afghanistan that has been plagued by delays and allegations of
impropriety.
The plant is part of the 1.4-billion-dollar project awarded to
Louis Berger Group, Inc. and Black & Veatch Joint Venture through
2011 to improve road, power generation capacity and power transmission
networks across Afghanistan.
A Louis Berger committee member, who is a former member of the
Australian army, was jailed in the United States for his involvement in
a 900,000-dollar Afghanistan security contract kickback case this
month, the Sydney Morning Herald reported on Feb. 6. Scott Anthony
Walker was a coordinator for the 1.4-billion-dollar infrastructure
project.
Officials have criticised implementation of aid through
contractors for years. A CorpWatch report quoted Jean Mazurelle, the
World Bank director in Kabul, saying that 35 to 40 percent of all
international aid sent to Afghanistan is "badly spent".
Mazurelle told Agence France Press in 2005: "In Afghanistan
the wastage of aid is sky-high: there is real looting going on, mainly
by private enterprises. It is a scandal. In 30 years of my career, I
have never seen anything like it."
International development is a burgeoning industry that has attracted
major defence and security contractors as the United States continues
to pour money into foreign assistance.
In 2009, L-3, the sixth largest U.S. defence contractor, bought
International Resources Group. The Washington D.C.-based group provides
management services to USAID, the World Bank, Asian Development Bank,
Inter-American Development Bank and the United Nations, among others.
In January, DynCorp, a private military contractor, announced that it
had acquired Casals and Associates, an international development and
strategic communications firm.
Casals' clients include EPA, UNDP, USAID, the Defence
Department, Department of Energy, HUD, and Department of Health and
Human Services, besides other federal government departments and
private companies, including Ernest and Young.
Inter Press Service