Saturday, December 19, 2015
Beijing accuses US of military provocation in disputed South China Sea
China has accused the United States of stoking tensions in the South China Sea after B-52 bombers flew within two nautical miles of an artificial island. The incident is the latest in a brewing dispute over the waters.
Two US B-52 strategic bombers entered airspace over a Chinese-built artificial military outpost in the Spratly Islands last week in a "serious military provocation," Beijing said on Saturday.
"The actions by the US side constitute a serious military provocation and are rendering more complex and even militarizing conditions in the South China Sea," China's Defense Ministry said in a statement.
The statement said the Chinese military on the island went on high alert during the December 10 overflight and warned the aircraft to leave the island's airspace.
Responding to China's complaint, the Pentagon on Friday said that the overflight was unintentional and would be investigated.
Issuing a more diplomatic response, China's Foreign Ministry on Saturday said the situation in the South China Sea was stable and that outside countries should avoid manufacturing tensions.
"Some countries outside the region are concerned about this region and we totally understand that, but I think these states need to support attempts to keep this region stable rather than just aggravating tensions or playing countries off against each other," China's Foreign Minister Wang Yi said during a visit to Berlin.
China claims sovereignty over the South China Sea and has built seven artificial islands over shallow reefs in the past year to exert control over the resource-rich waters, which are also claimed by neighboring states.
Over the past several months, Washington has conducted so-called freedom of navigation missions, including sailing a guided-missile destroyer in October near the islands in a challenge to Chinese claims. At the time, China referred to the destroyer sail-by as an "extremely irresponsible" move.
Washington's official policy is to ensure freedom of navigation along a major trade route. The US added that it has no position on sovereignty over the South China Sea, over which Vietnam, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Brunei have made various claims of sovereignty. The United States also said that international law, when applied to artificial islands, does not give China traditional territorial rights, which extend 12 nautical miles (22 kilometers) from the coast of a country's territory.
But China's Defense Ministry asserted that "the United States has continuously sent military ships andplanes to make a show of force and create tensions in the waters and airspace." It added that China would "take all necessary measures" to defend its sovereignty over the islands.
China backed up those claims this week by conducting war games involving warships, submarines and fighter jets, the Chinese Army's media outlet said.
The latest tension over the South China Sea comes a week after the US approved a $1.8 billion (1.65 billion euros) arms deal to Taiwan for warships, missiles and amphibious assault vehicles.
Beijing considers Taiwan a breakaway province and filed a diplomatic complaint demanding the United States not go through with the arms sale in order to avoid harming US-China relations.
http://www.dw.com/en/beijing-accuses-us-of-military-provocation-in-disputed-south-china-sea/a-18929387
Russian long-range warplanes drop 1,500 bombs on ISIS targets in Syria
Russian long-range warplanes have carried out 145 sorties against Islamic State targets since joining the country’s anti-terror campaign in Syria in mid-November.
“In total, long-range aviation aircraft in Syria have carried out around 145 mission sorties, some 1,500 bombs have been dropped and about 20 cruise missiles have been fired," Gen. Anatoly Konovalov, deputy commander of Russia’s long-range aviation force, told Ekho Moskvy radio station.
The crews of Tu-22 (Blinder) and Tu-160 (Blackjack) strategic bombers took off from airfields in Russia and spent 16 hours in the air to fulfill their combat tasks in Syria, he added.
"It was extraordinary and new how the Tu-160s performed their sortie from our northern airfield of Olenegorsk, flying around Europe, entering the Mediterranean and by carrying out missile launches at IS targets in Syria. Notably, those targets were hit with high precision,” he added. Olenegorsk is in Russia’s northwestern Murmansk Region.
The Tu-22s carried out the bombings, while cruise missiles of both new and old modification were fired by Tu-160 aircraft, Konovalov said.
Also on Saturday, Vladimir Putin said that the Russian military hasn’t yet used all its capabilities during its air campaign in Syria, adding that external means may be implemented if necessary.
“We see how effective our pilots and intelligence officers are [in Syria], how effective they are in coordinating their efforts with each other and different military branches – Army, Navy, Air Force,” he said.
The president insisted that “the most modern weaponry is employed” during the operation, but stressed that Russia “is using everything it has in its possession” against Islamic State and other terror groups.
“We also have additional means. If there’s such a need we’ll implement them,” Putin said.
Russia’s strategic bombers began conducting airstrikes against Islamic State and other terrorist groups in Syria on November 17.
Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu said that the involvement of its fleet of 25 strategic bombers allowed Moscow to double the number of airstrikes in the country.
The announcement of long-range aviation involvement in Syria came days after the deadly IS attacks in Paris and official confirmation that the crash of the Russian A321 jet
over Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula in late October was caused by a terrorist bomb attack.
over Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula in late October was caused by a terrorist bomb attack.
Previously, sorties in Syria were carried out exclusively by Sukhoi warplanes, including the cutting-edge Su-34 as well as the tried-and-tested Su-25 and Su-24M aircraft.
Russia has been conducting dozens of combat flights against Islamic State and other terrorist targets in in the country on a daily basis since September 30 after an official request by President Bashar Assad.
https://www.rt.com/news/326532-russia-strategic-bombers-syria-isis/
‘We easily work with Assad, US & others as we don’t change our position’ – Putin in new documentary
Russia easily works both with Syrian government and the US as well as with Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries because it does not change its stance, President Vladimir Putin said in a forthcoming documentary about the emerging world order.
The upcoming documentary is to focus on “the new world order, where the world is heading, what awaits us all and in what future our children will find themselves in,” Vladimir Soloviev, Russian journalist, TV presenter and the author of the film told Rossiya 1 TV channel.
The crew was filming the documentary for several months, visiting many countries for dozens of interviews. Serbian film director Emir Kusturica, former IMF head Dominique Strauss-Kahn, former Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf and the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange are all to appear on the screen. But, according to Soloviev, it is the interviews with Putin that are “a crucially important” part of the documentary.
“The interests of the European countries lie in joining their efforts both in economy, in politics and in fight against terrorism. [They lie] in joining the efforts with Russia,” Putin said in one such interview. Rossiya 24 TV channel showed a preview on Saturday.
“We are not going to stick out our bottom lip over the sanctions. We are waiting. Waiting for everyone,” Russian president added.
“Speaking about the Syrian crisis, we easily work both with President Assad and the US… as well as with our friends from Saudi Arabia and other Arab states. Why? We… do not change our position,” Putin also said.
The latest interview with Putin featured in the documentary was recorded just after his annual press conference on Thursday.
In the meantime, another Russian documentary, “President,” focusing on Vladimir Putin’s 15 years in power and first aired by Rossiya 1 TV channel on April 26, was shown on Italy’s Rete 4 channel on December 7.
‘President’ was not the only high-profile documentary featuring exclusive interviews with Vladimir Putin that was aired by Russian TV so far. In a film titled, “Crimea: The Road Back Home,” the Russian president gave some insights into the process of Crimea’s reunification with Russia.
In the documentary about Crimea, Putin also said that the US was behind the coup in Ukraine, adding that Russia was well aware of this.
Of course 'socialism' was most-searched term of 2015: its ideas fit our times
Kshama Sawant
Since the Occupy movement, the dirty word as far as many millennials are concerned is not socialism, but capitalism.
There is a decisive mood of resistance in America – a backlash to the status quo. The Bernie Sanders campaign for president is capturing that mood, and it is no surprise that ‘socialism’ was the most looked-up word in 2015.
The American youth of today did not grow up in the shadow of the Cold War. The vilification of socialist ideas by Republicans anyway only serves, if anything, to pique their interest. Coupled with that is the future most young Americans face: a low-wage job market, proliferation of student debt and an escalating housing affordability crisis. Since the Occupy movement, the dirty word as far as many millennials are concerned is not socialism, but capitalism.
There is deep anger against gaping income inequality and systemic racism. People are hungry for political alternatives that will serve their interests for a change instead of the insatiable greed of Wall Street.
Our city council re-election victory in Seattle, Washington, this fall is a powerful indicator of the prevailing mood. The first time our Socialist Alternative Partywon, in 2013, the political and business establishment did not take us seriously. But we have shown that not only can a socialist win in the US, a socialist can drive the political agenda of a major city. This time around, big business and their political representatives mobilized a massive campaign against us, fueled with large amounts of corporate cash, disingenuous attack mailers, red baiting and red herrings.
Despite the fact that most Democratic party leaders backed my opponent, the majority of ordinary people who consider themselves Democratssupported my openly socialist campaign. We won decisively with 56% of the vote. We set a new record by raising nearly half a million dollars - none of it corporate cash - with a median contribution of $50.
In 2013, many people voted for me in spite of the fact I was a socialist. In this year’s election, many more people voted consciously for socialist politics.
The same shift has happened on a personal level. Only a few years ago at social gatherings, saying I was a socialist used to be a conversation stopper. Now, those same people are curious about what I mean by socialism and excited about the prospect of a fighting political challenge to the billionaire class.
With Bernie Sanders’s campaign, the number of people enticed by socialist ideas has increased far beyond Seattle. The avalanche of Wall Street and billionaire cash for Hillary Clinton has not been able to lower the crest of support for a socialist presidential candidate. Sanders’s campaign just made a historic milestone of having raised money from 2 million donors, with no corporate money and with an average donation of $30.
There are major differences in the history of socialist parties and ideas in Europe compared to the United States – it doesn’t have the sour tinge the term retains here across the pond.
But there is great anger in Europe at the vicious austerity and unemployment. Working people in Europe are searching for alternatives to failed and treacherous political leaders and parties. The support last year for Scottish independenceamong the youth during the referendum, and more recently, the rise of Jeremy Corbyn as a socialist to the leadership of the Labour Party, indicate that working-class people and the youth are looking for a way out of the dead-end of capitalism.
Millions are beginning to reject the rule of the billionaire class and increasingly looking to genuine ideas of socialism. Mass movements of working people will be the critical factor in leading humanity away from a world ridden with war, poverty, refugee crises and climate disaster and toward a society that can use the resources of this planet to deliver a sustainable and high standard of living for all.
Donald Trump Campaign Lags in Mobilizing Iowa Caucus Voters
Donald J. Trump has dominated much of this political season, excited an often-ignored part of the electorate, filled huge arenas with followers and upended the rules of how modern campaigns are run.
But now he faces an urgent question: Can he actually win crucial early contest states?
Translating a personality-driven campaign to the voting booth is no easy feat, especially for a candidate who has never run before.
But here in the state with the first nominating contest, about six weeks away, Mr. Trump has fallen behind in the nuts and bolts of organizing. A loss in Iowa for Mr. Trump, where he has devoted the most resources of his campaign, could imperil his leads in the next two nominating states, New Hampshire and South Carolina, where his get-out-the-vote organizations are even less robust.
A successful ground game is crucial in Iowa because of the state’s complicated method of caucus voting, but the Trump campaign has lagged in reaching some of its own benchmarks.
Mr. Trump’s Iowa director predicted that he would recruit a leader for each of the state’s 1,681 Republican precincts by Thanksgiving. Instead, the first major training session for precinct leaders, heavily promoted in emails and conference calls, drew only about 80 people to West Des Moines last weekend, with about 50 participating online.
Some of Mr. Trump’s Republican rivals have spent months calling and knocking on doors to identify potential supporters to draw them out to caucuses, but Mr. Trump does not appear to have invested in this crucial “voter ID” strategy until recently.
The Trump campaign hopes to attract a surge of independents and disaffected Democrats on caucus night, but the latest data from the Iowa secretary of state show no significant growth in Republican registrations.
Interviews in Iowa with Mr. Trump’s campaign workers, his volunteers and dozens of attendees at his rallies over two months, as well as observations of voter outreach, conference calls and confidential training sessions, indicate that Mr. Trump’s support in the Feb. 1 Iowa caucuses may fall short of his poll numbers in the state. He is now trading the lead position with Senator Ted Cruz of Texas. Mr. Trump’s greatest organizing asset is a database of thousands of email addresses of Iowans who have attended packed rallies. Yet it appears that organizers have only recently begun tapping that database, which a Democratic strategist in Iowa called “malpractice.”
The “magic number” of voters the Trump campaign has revealed it wants to turn out — 48,000 — is highly optimistic in the view of other Republican campaigns and independent experts.
“It’s easy for someone to sit on a phone when they get a polling call and say, ‘I like candidate X,’ ” said Steve Grubbs, the Iowa state director for Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, referring to Mr. Trump’s strength in Iowa polls. “It’s far different to get that person out of a La-Z-Boy to hop in a car and avoid the black ice and head to their local firehouse.” Mr. Grubbs, who said he had already signed up 800 precinct captains for Mr. Paul, added, “You really have to put your organization together by Dec. 15.”
Mr. Trump has about 15 paid Iowa staff members, compared with 36 working for a “super PAC“ supporting Ben Carson that is organizing in his behalf in Iowa. Asked where Carson supporters have canvassed in Iowa, Tina Goff, who is directing the troops, said, “Where haven’t we canvassed?”
The campaign of Mr. Cruz opened a 48-bed dormitory in Des Moines this month, nicknamed Camp Cruz, for what it says will be 500 volunteers from out of state. They will knock on doors and make calls to potential supporters, who are identified by microtargeting software. Because of the peculiar nature of the caucuses, for which voters gather in classrooms and senior centers at an appointed hour, turnout is lower than for primaries. A representative of each candidate — a precinct captain — may give a brief speech, and then there is a secret ballot. Only about one in five active registered Republicans have historically participated, making a candidate’s get-out-the-vote organizing critical.
But Mr. Trump “so far is not running a traditional campaign reliant on the fundamentals,” said Jeff Patch, a Republican strategist in Iowa unaffiliated with a candidate. “A campaign depending on turning out low-propensity G.O.P. voters and bringing new voters into the process should be registering people in December and January.”
In Davenport, a blue-collar city on the Mississippi River, a paid Trump staff member and two volunteers worked their phones early this month from a restaurant booth, encouraging people to attend a Dec. 5 rally with Mr. Trump.
Fanned across the table was an inch-thick stack of pages with registered Republicans. The campaign had yet to narrow the universe of thousands of Republicans in the Davenport area to potential Trump supporters, the kind of screening some campaigns had already done.
Betsey Tibbitts, a volunteer sipping white wine, got off a call with a voter named Mildred. “Mildred is a big X,” she said. “Mildred is not going to vote for him.”
She was more encouraged on the next call when a woman said she was logging on to her computer right then to register for tickets to the rally, which were free.
Chuck Laudner, Mr. Trump’s Iowa state director, declined repeated requests to discuss the details of his field effort. In a brief interview after a Trump rally, he disputed the notion that Mr. Trump could not turn out a huge wave of first-time caucusgoers.
“The media says the conventional wisdom is new people don’t come out and vote,” he said. In the 1980s, he added, “when I cut my teeth, Pat Robertson turned out the entire religious right that had never mobilized before.”
The demographics of Trump supporters reveal his challenges: They are younger, lack a college degree and are less likely to be evangelical Christians, according to polling. The profile of past caucusgoers is the opposite: most are 45 and up, college educated and evangelical. What the Trump campaign has going for it is the enthusiasm the candidate inspires at his rallies, which are the largest of any Republican. “I take Trump’s caucus prospects very seriously,” said an operative supporting another candidate, speaking on the condition of anonymity to candidly assess a rival. “It’s true that new candidates think they can change history. It’s true that they never do. It’s true we’ve never had a new candidate like Trump.” Trump supporters compare him to another candidate in recent caucus history who generated record-setting turnout by first-time voters: Barack Obama. But unlike the Trump campaign, Mr. Obama invested heavily in Iowa. He had over 200 paid staff members in more than 60 offices. Derek Eadon, an organizer for Mr. Obama in 2007 and now a political consultant in Des Moines, said that despite collecting contact information for people to attend Trump rallies, the campaign was neglecting follow-through. “It’s very tough to activate via email without field staff following up on the phone and asking them to volunteer or talk about the campaign,” he said. “It’s malpractice not to follow up with those folks immediately.”
Of eight people interviewed at a Trump rally in Waterloo in early October, all gave the Trump campaign their emails. Contacted recently by a reporter, four of the eight said they had not received any follow-up. The others received a mass email asking them to volunteer for Mr. Trump, but they were uninterested. Russell Hotchkiss said he was too busy with a 1-year-old and a small business to be a political activist. Judy Cruze, a nurse, deleted the campaign’s emails and has no intention of caucusing for anyone. For its training session last weekend, the Trump campaign had sought out people who had attended rallies to be caucus leaders. The modest participation for the session in person and online contradicted Mr. Laudner’s promise to have nearly 1,700 caucus leaders in place by Thanksgiving, as he told NBC News in October.
The volunteer leaders, known as precinct captains, learned that they would be responsible for bringing 25 or more people from their neighborhoods to the caucuses. They were shown how to download an app, Ground Game 2, with a “walk list” of registered Republicans in their precincts.
It was clear from the training that the Trump campaign was only beginning to identify supporters, and that its volunteers could face unique challenges in going door to door. “Just listen to them,” a Trump staff member advised volunteers on how to elicit and record issues on voters’ minds. “If they’re concerned about the border,” he said, mark down immigration. “If they’re worried about space aliens stealing the fillings out of their teeth, it’s ‘other.’ ”
Tana Goertz, a peppy former contestant on “The Apprentice,” Mr. Trump’s reality television program, enticingly held out the prospect of rewards for the best performers, like a game show.
“At the end of the caucus night, Mr. Trump is going to know who won their precincts, and he’s going to know you were the precinct leaders,” she said. “I know he does nice things. You will be recognized.”
Democratic Debate: Acrimony and Uncertainty After Clinton Data Breach
For the second time in a row, unexpected events have completely upended a Democratic presidential debate. When candidates met in Iowa a month ago, the Paris terror attack had taken place one day earlier, casting a somber mood on the event and forcing an unexpected focus on national security.
Here, ahead of Saturday night's debate, the explosive revelation that Bernie Sanders' campaign staffers improperly accessed sensitive information owned by the Hillary Clinton campaign has shaken up the field once again. The ensuing fallout, unfolding over a tumultuous 24 hours on Friday, included a complete cutoff of voter data to Sanders' campaign, a federal lawsuit, and accusations of potential illegal activity — all before it was quickly resolved late last night.
The data breach and ensuing controversy will overshadow any policy differences or political positioning heading into the debate, and cast a pall on its outcome, regardless of how much the candidates actually discuss the issue on stage.
All parties say they want to get back to the issues— but whether they do will be entirely up to them. Will Clinton, whose campaign has been unusually aggressive in targeting Sanders, go in for the kill and seek to end the primary now? Or will she try to rise above the fray, perhaps even borrowing a line from Sanders to say "the American people are sick and tired of hearing about" his damn data breach?
Perhaps more likely, she'll follow the path charted by DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who has praised Sanders as a man of integrity while saying his campaign served him poorly in an this egregious error.
And will Sanders, whom we have not heard from personally, cast himself as the aggrieved party and offer no peace? His campaign has used the DNC's draconian response to the breach to rally supporters to their long-standing struggle with the party and called the data cutoff a death sentence. Or will Sanders take responsibility, even though his staff kept him in the dark about the breach, and offer a mea culpa?
Perhaps he will turn the issue around on the moderators by saying the American people want to talk about issues, not inside baseball matters like this.
The fact that any of these possibilities are as likely as the rest underscores how much the incident has roiled the primary, which was threatening to turn into a low-wattage hum as Donald Trump captivated attention on the other side of the aisle.
Still, the candidates will undoubtedly spend most of their on stage discussing more substantive fare.
Sanders had telegraphed all week that he is preparing to press Clinton on her hawkishness and her tendency to support regime change.
"One of the areas that we're going to focus on maybe a little bit more than we have in the past is the differences between Secretary Clinton and myself on foreign policy," he said while campaigning in New Hampshire Monday.
Clinton seems eager to discuss that as well, confident her extensive foreign policy experience will trump Sanders' purity. She even wrote an op-ed earlier this week in the state's largest paper discussing her plan for ISIS. It was a major topic during the second Democratic debate in Iowa, but there is much more to be hashed out on military interventionism, which was the definitive issue of the 2008 Democratic primary.
At the same time, far more local issues are likely to be put front and center. Sanders has sought to differentiate himself from Clinton by coming out against a high-profile and controversial proposed natural gas pipeline that would run through New Hampshire. Clinton in July dismissed it as a "local issue," but now that Sanders has taken a position, she may be forced to do so as well.
And all three candidates will likely be unable to avoid a minuscule labor dispute with outsize impact: A pension disagreement with just about a dozen employees at Manchester-based ABC affiliate WMUR, one of only two TV stations in the state, has roped in all three candidates and led the DNC to strip WMUR of its sponsorship of the debate.
Meanwhile, opiate addiction, which has become an epidemic in New Hampshire, is also likely to be a topic in the debate. All three candidates have discussed the issue and pledged to bolster public health and recovery programs, and curb law enforcement. It's an issue many New Hampshire voters want to hear candidates weigh in on. A WMUR poll from October had the stunning result that New Hampshire voters found drug abuse as the single most important problem facing the state.
Saturday's debate is critical for Sanders, as New Hampshire is the lynchpin in his campaigns' strategy. His top official in the state acknowledge to MSNBC last week that it is a "must-win." He had a bit of momentum thanks to some big endorsement Thursday, but that may have been swept away by the data breach.
It's important for Clinton, too. A seasoned candidate on the debate stage, she seemed to stumble in the last one, perhaps out of overconfidence.
No matter what, however, the final Democratic debate of the year promises to be far more exciting and unexpected that it was shaping up to be just 48 hours ago.
Old Dixie Highway renamed President Barack Obama Highway in Florida city
Old Dixie Highway is no more in Riviera Beach, Fla. Instead, motorists are driving on President Barack Obama Highway.
Riviera Beach officials renamed the portion of the highway in their city limits, and the new sign carrying the name of the nation’s first black president went up Thursday. Old Dixie, officials said, paid homage to an era that glorified slavery.
The name was “symbolic of racism, symbolic of the Klan, symbolic of cross burnings, and today we are stepping up to a new day, a new era,” Riviera Beach Mayor Thomas Masters told WPTV on Thursday.
The street itself carried a painful history for some. Dora Johnson, 77, told the television station that she once witnessed a cross-burning on Old Dixie Highway. Johnson will be given the old sign that has been removed, Masterstold the Palm Beach Post.
The city council’s August vote to rename Old Dixie came at a time when many communities in the South were reconsidering Confederate flags and monuments. A national debate over such symbols began anew following the June shooting of nine parishioners by a white gunman inside a historic black church in South Carolina.
“Dixie” has become synonymous with the antebellum south, slavery and the states that seceded from the Union. The song “Dixie,” dubbed the anthem of the Confederacy, became popularized through minstrel shows with actors in blackface.
The Dixie Highway system was born in the early 1900s out of a desire to connect people further north to Florida, and the road snaked from the Midwest to the South.
Residents in Riviera Beach, which is nearly 70 percent black, spoke out in August in favor of the change, and cheered as the sign came down Thursday,the Sun Sentinel reported.
“I love where I’m from,” resident Kendra Williams said during the August debate over the name change. “I love the South. But I do not love Dixie. Nothing about it represents black Americans.”
President Barack Obama Highway now intersects with Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard.
Should Bangladesh provide mercenaries to the Saudi coalition?
What the Saudi Defence Minister Mohammad bin Salman al-Saud declared on last Tuesday (December 15) about the formation of a so-called coalition of 34 Muslim nations to fight the ISIS and Islamist terror was dramatic, ridiculous, and ominous. It signalled the beginning of a long-drawn war between super powers, and between Muslim nations on sectarian and other more important geopolitical issues.
Nothing could be more ridiculous than assuming that Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Egypt and some other Muslim nations have suddenly decided to crush the ISIS for the sake of global and regional peace. It's unbelievable that countries like Turkey, who buy cheap oil from the ISIS and treat its injured fighters in their hospitals, can just abandon their protégés for some unknown reasons.
Then again, as there are multiple variables about the nature and outcome of the so-called coalition, made in absolute haste, so are there divergent opinions about how this coalition will work, or if it will work at all. Analysts aren't sure if the coalition will ever involve military forces anywhere. There is scepticism about the real motives of Saudi Arabia. Some analysts believe the coalition reflects Saudi Arabia's desire to prove that the kingdom and its state ideology (Wahhabism) have nothing to do with the ISIS.
Others argue that Saudi Arabia wants to contain the growing Iranian influence in the region, especially in Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Lebanon; and that the coalition reflects Saudi apprehension that the eventual lifting of nuclear-related sanctions against Iran will further strengthen its Shiite adversary. Some analysts believe there are no military implications of the coalition. One of them insists: “At the end of the day this is a political message, not an operational strategic one. It seems very ad hoc.” He believes the coalition is all about containing Iranian influence in the region.
Monish Gulati is quite optimistic about the outcome of the coalition: “The coalition could serve to heal the divide amongst the Sunni Arab countries; the coming together of Turkey and Egypt could bring some positive influence to bear in countries like Palestine where cultural and sectarian rifts have influenced developments negatively. The coalition could even, to the relief of the West, address the refugee issue.” Last but not least, some analysts believe the coalition is aimed at assuaging the world that Muslim nations aren't indifferent to Islamist terror attacks, and are determined to address the problem.
One, however, doesn't believe that the unilateral declaration by the Saudi defence minister has anything to do with fighting the ISIS and its ilk. One doesn't believe the coalition will bring the Sunni Muslims together, and will positively impact Palestine, and will address the refugee problem. It seems like the coalition is all about overthrowing the Assad regime in Syria, and eventually containing the Russian and Iranian influence in the region. No wonder, unlike conventional military alliances, which take months and years to germinate, evolve and mature, one single declaration by a Saudi prince ushered in a mega military alliance of 34 nations. Surprisingly, some of the “coalition” members – including Pakistan and Bangladesh – only learnt about their inclusion in the alliance through media reports.
There's nothing inclusive or Islamic/Muslim about the coalition. Had defeating the ISIS been a motive, Syria and Iraq – the worst victims of ISIS terror – would have been in the coalition. The exclusion of Iran makes no sense either. While Saudi Arabia and Turkey have been virtually at war with anti-ISIS forces in Syria, Iraq, and Yemen, one wonders as to how these countries are members of a coalition, purportedly created to crush the ISIS and other Sunni terror outfits across the region! As the Saudi minister asserted, the coalition would be led by Saudi Arabia, which would also host a “joint operations centre” to coordinate efforts. Most importantly, military operations are very much in the agenda of the coalition.
In this backdrop, it's simply unbelievable that Bangladesh has decided to support the coalition, and might send mercenaries to tilt at windmills. What doesn't seem to have dawned on policymakers in the country is that sending mercenaries to kill innocent civilians in the “neo-war on terror” is altogether a different ball game from sending troops for UN peacekeeping missions. Since Bangladesh came into being by fighting a just war against the perpetrators of an unjust one in 1971, joining an unjust war – a proxy war of super powers and their clients – is reprehensible, least dignified and desirable.
One is afraid, what Bangladesh has earned over the years by taking part in UN peacekeeping missions, would be thrown away by sending mercenaries to fight proxy wars in the Middle East. Since proxy wars lack transparency and legitimacy, no peace loving country can take part in such wars. Since the Saudi-led coalition isn't aimed at fighting the ISIS and other Sunni extremists but to contain Iran, Russia and other common enemies of Washington, Riyadh, and Ankara, it's reprehensible that countries like Bangladesh should send mercenaries just to earn some foreign currency. Last but not least, as per the Constitution, Bangladesh can't engage in any warfare on behalf of some other country/entity in a foreign land (unless sanctioned by the UN).
Bangladesh has already sent thousands of maids to work for their Arab masters – in the most deplorable conditions – to augment its foreign currency reserve. It shouldn't even think of sending mercenaries to fight someone else's unjust wars. Self-respect, dignity, and commitment to peace and justice are more important than foreign currency. Nobody respects a nation of coolies, domestic servants and mercenaries.
The writer teaches security studies at Austin Peay State University. Sage has recently published his latest book, Global Jihad and America: The Hundred-Year War Beyond Iraq and Afghanistan.
#Bangladesh government 'incapable of tolerating dissident views'
The government in Bangladesh is set on stopping dissenters from expressing their opinions, claims Nurul Kabir, the editor of the leading English-language daily newspaper New Age, in an interview with DW.
The shrinking space for free speech in Bangladesh has drawn international attention in recent months. The South Asian nation has seen a number of gruesome attacks on bloggers this year that left four people dead and several others critically injured.
The attacks have targeted not only bloggers, but also minority communities.
In a DW interview, Nurul Kabir, the editor of the English-language newspaper New Age, talks about the Bangladeshi government's motives behind curbing press freedom in the country.
DW: Germany has expressed concern over shrinking space for free speech in Bangladesh. Do you feel that there are enough grounds for such an assumption?
Nurul Kabir: Freedom of expression has never been fully implemented in Bangladesh, though the constitution guarantees it. The present government has started putting pressure on people who criticize its activities or reject its political or philosophical stance. A climate of fear has now gripped the country. As a result, some media outlets are exercising self-censorship.
A climate of fear has now gripped Bangladesh, Nurul Kabir tells DW
For example, political TV talk shows are very popular in the country, but the government agencies have provided the TV authorities with a list of pro-government guests for the talk shows. TV channels are directly or indirectly pressured not to go beyond such lists when choosing their guests and most channels comply.
What do you mean by 'direct' or 'indirect' pressure?
Bangladesh's private TV channels previously invited me as a guest to their talk shows. I used to talk about political and social issues in such programs. But recently, they have stopped calling me and I wanted to know the reason behind it. It seems that the TV authorities have been pressured by the government intelligence agencies not to call me for the shows. They have been given a list of the people who should not be invited to TV talk shows. My name is on the list with some others who refuse to toe the government line in regard to their interpretation of different events.
The European Parliament (EP) has asked the Bangladeshi authorities to restore the full independence of the media. Do you think this will have an impact?
The resolution passed by the EP is 'non-binding.' Therefore, it may not be effective in practice. However, such resolutions in the international arena put moral pressure on the government.
It has to be noted that the popularity of the government is tending towards nil at the present moment, especially since the government did not come to power through an inclusive election. A political party or coalition needs more than 150 seats in the parliament to form a government in Bangladesh, but the ruling coalition had as many as 153 elected uncontested.
When a government loses its popularity, it tends to rely more heavily on the state's repressive machines. The incumbents are therefore dependent on the top leaders of the military, police and other security agencies to cling to the power. Such a government is inherently incapable of tolerating dissident views.
I think the government will not respond to moral pressure from the EP. Rather, concerted political pressure from other democratic forces on the government could bring in freedom of expression in the country.
Four bloggers and a publisher have been killed in the country this year. Minorities have been attacked and some have also been killed. Have such killings had any impact on the media?
The killing of bloggers is very tragic and objectionable. I believe everyone has the right to express his/her opinion. Even if we don't agree with what the bloggers have written on the internet about religion, they have the right to express their opinions. Just as the government has no right to stop the political dissidents from expressing their opinions, those who kill bloggers have no right to do so either. The killers must be brought to justice.
I believe that extremist ideas and activism appear in a society in the absence of a democratic political and cultural environment. Therefore, the government needs to ensure democracy and the room for free speech for all within the country.
Nurul Kabir is the editor of the English daily newspaper New Age in Bangladesh.
Behold: How the US blew $17 billion in Afghanistan
In 2008, the Pentagon bought 20 refurbished cargo planes for the Afghan Air Force, but as one top US officer put it, “just about everything you can think of was wrong.” No spare parts, for example. The planes were also “a death trap,” according to the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction. So $486 million was spent on worthless planes that no one could fly. We did recoup some of the investment. Sixteen of the planes were sold as scrap for the grand sum of $32,000. That’s 6 cents a pound.
You’d think someone would have been in trouble.
Wrong.
Nothing happened to anybody in charge of that spectacular screw up. No general even had to make an embarrassing appearance on Capitol Hill. Congress made not a peep.
Even worse, such jaw-dropping waste without a shred of accountability is not an anomaly. It has happened in Afghanistan again and again, and, you guessed it, again. Some of the more outlandish examples have briefly seized the attention of the news media, but really, the running tab for the waste has mounted out of sight of the taxpayers footing the bill.
And what a bill it is. There’s a widely held idea of “just” as in “just a few million.” Like the military officer who wrote that the $25 million blown on a fancy headquarters nobody used was “probably not bad in the grand scheme of things.” But those millions add up. To billions.
The problem, contrary to popular assumptions, is not unscrupulous contractors. Follow the long trail of waste and you’ll be standing at the doors of the military, the State Department and the US. Agency for International Development. It’s their bad decisions, bad purchases and bad programs that are consistently to blame.
ProPublica pored over more than 200 audits, special projects and inspections done by SIGAR since 2009 and built a database to add up the total cost of failed reconstruction projects. Looking at the botched projects collectively — rather than as one-off headlines — reveals a grim picture of the overall reconstruction effort and a repeated cycle of mistakes.
- In just six years, the IG has tallied at least $17 billion in questionable spending. This includes $3.6 billion in outright waste, projects teetering on the brink of waste, or projects that can’t — or won’t — be sustained by the Afghans, as well as an additional $13.5 billion that the average taxpayer might easily judge to be waste. Exhibit A for “You be the judge”: $8.4 billion was spent on counter-narcotics programs that were so ineffective that Afghanistan has produced record levels of heroin — more than it did before the war started.
- Often the programs’ ambitions were out of whack with the reality of life in Afghanistan. After the invasion, the US rushed forward with bold plans to create a democratic, fiscally secure, ethical government and society — out of whole cloth. It was the same country-building bravado that had earlier tripped up the US in Iraq when it dismissed the local culture and ignored corruption.
- “Pie in the sky” projects, as one USAID worker called them, were routinely launched without any thought to the financial and technological ability of the Afghans to maintain them. It turned out that the Afghans couldn’t afford most of them, so even the best programs could end up becoming waste.
- None of the programs were required to prove they had even limited success. Officials tracked dollars spent, not impact. For instance, no one evaluated whether Afghan security forces actually learned to read and write after going through a $200 million literacy program.
- Those who signed off on the failed projects appeared to suffer no consequences. As head of SIGAR John Sopko puts it: Reconstruction efforts are “like a child sports game where everyone gets a trophy.”
If this accounting wasn’t bad enough, consider this: SIGAR has only examined a small percentage of the $110 billion effort to rebuild and remodel Afghanistan. The waste totals are likely much higher.
Still, it’s often hard to grasp what this kind of money means to the average American. Perhaps the most meaningful way to underscore what has been lost is to look at what the money could have paid for at home.
To set the scene, in 2010, as the US was drastically increasing its investment in Afghanistan, a quarter of America’s homeowners — more than 11 million — were underwater on their mortgages, and the country hovered near a 10 percent unemployment rate. Congress was routinely gutting federal programs.
The $14.7 million spent on a storage facility the military never used? That could have paid for about 9,800 rape kits to be tested — enough to clear the backlog for the entire state of Tennessee.
The $456,000 police-training facility that was so poorly constructed it literally melted in the rain? That could have funded more than 180,000 dinners for low-income kids, enough for an entire summer.
The $335 million spent on a power plant that the Afghans don’t use? That could have paid for permanent housing for 37,000 homeless Americans and $250,000 grants to 20 small-business owners to help them commercialize new technologies.
Take the money wasted on those worthless planes, plus that spent on an unused consulate, and fixing the buildings constructed with hazardous materials. That could have restored the $714 million cut from the National Institute of Health’s budget, which funds scientific research into new treatments for disease.
Despite such trade-offs, there’s been little collective outrage from either the public or Congress about the massive waste in Afghanistan.
The military, the State Department and USAID provided detailed public responses to the findings in each of SIGAR's reports, sometimes disputing the conclusions and recommendations. The reports and their responses can be read here. This week a Defense Department spokesman told ProPublica that the Pentagon “disagrees with the assertion that $17B in projects are 'questionable.'"
Often those responsible for the failed projects treat SIGAR’s findings like unnecessary niggling. Their rejoinder, in essence: “Hey, it’s a war zone, what do you expect?” There’s little time spent on pondering the bigger question: If it’s a war zone, why were we pouring billions into reconstruction?
Fingers in Ears:
Ignoring History, Advice and Culture
Iraq could have been a template for what worked and what didn’t when it came to massive reconstruction in the midst of a violent insurgency.
In 2009, when reconstruction ramped up in Afghanistan, similar efforts had been going on for years in Iraq — with often dismal results.
If one thing is clear from ProPublica’s review of SIGAR’s trove of inspection reports and extensive interviews with aid workers, former military and others familiar with the reconstruction efforts, the US is a slow learner.
Again and again, the US disregarded expert advice, the local culture or past mistakes in both Afghanistan and Iraq — sometimes, ignoring all three in a single failed project.
In fairness, the countries present vastly different challenges, and some experts contend that it would be a mistake to apply lessons from one to the other. “I categorically don’t accept comparisons from Afghanistan to Iraq,” said Larry Sampler, a senior USAID official for Afghanistan.
Nevertheless, the game plans for both countries were virtually the same: Military-led development with a focus on security forces. The creation of a Western-style democracy. And an attempt to thwart an insurgency by providing services like healthcare and energy. In its key elements, the “hearts and minds” campaign of Iraq in the mid-2000s was picked up and shipped to Afghanistan.
And the problems SIGAR has found are nearly a carbon copy of those uncovered by its counterpart in Iraq.
Take perhaps the biggest lesson spelled out in the Iraq inspector general’s final report (called, ironically, “Learning From Iraq”). Large-scale projects were perilous when there was still active fighting. Anything big drew the attention of the insurgency.
In an interview, former Ambassador William Taylor, who worked as director of the Iraq Reconstruction Management Office from 2004 to 2005, said this lesson was reinforced on a daily basis in Iraq. He recalled morning briefings with the military brass to go over political and reconstruction developments.
“Very frequently on those PowerPoints you would see this pipeline that already had been reconstructed had been blown up again. Or an electricity grid,” Taylor said. “That led us to several lessons in Iraq that have general applicability, which are: Smaller projects at the local level, by and large, are to be preferred.”
That didn’t stop the US years later from trying to build a nationwide electricity system in Afghanistan that crossed through Taliban strongholds at the height of fighting. Or sinking billions into roads that spanned the country and were routinely blown up by insurgents.
Officials also identified over-gifting as a problem in Iraq. Iraqis would give a “head nod” to whatever the US offered, because they weren’t footing the bill, former Ambassador Ryan Crocker told Iraq’s inspector general. Once the projects were built, the Iraqis couldn’t pay to operate or maintain them.
And yet in Afghanistan, the military, the State Department and USAID repeatedly defended unsustainable projects by saying that the Afghans had agreed to them.
Corruption also prominently undermined the security forces in Iraq and many efforts at governance. SIGAR, however, said the US moved forward for years in Afghanistan with no strategy in place to deal with corruption, a failure investigators found baffling.
“Something that quite’s pertinent to Afghanistan that we could have learned in Iraq is the problem of the local culture of corruption,” said Charles Tiefer, who investigated reconstruction on the Commission for Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Then there was the military, the State Department and USAID’s frequent failures to consider the local culture in either country, a costly misstep that caused many ill-considered projects to tank.
Retired British Gen. Sir Nick Parker, who commanded in Iraq then was deputy commander of the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan from 2009 to 2010, said serious attempts were made to better understand the Afghans, but the military still “underestimated the enormous differences that existed” in how Westerners and the Afghans decided their priorities.
Parker and others who worked in Afghanistan said there was an overriding sense of “we know what’s best for Afghanistan” among the military and development agencies, and the Afghans didn’t have a real seat at the table.
The reconstruction effort was also rushed, because the surge of troops in the country that made it possible would only last a short while. The military saw itself “as being in the driving seat, and that will inevitably skew the way decisions are made,” Parker said. “And I would conclude that the decisions are then probably not necessarily in the best interest of the people who live in the country.”
Ashley Jackson, who worked for Oxfam and the United Nations in Afghanistan, described the reconstruction effort as often feeling “super colonial.” She recalled that in meetings after discussing what the Western forces wanted to do, someone inevitably said “put an Afghan face on it.” One time she was taken aback when the American military dismissed a local NGO in Kunar as unimportant because it was “just Afghans working there.”
This attitude showed up in projects that were tone deaf to the Afghan culture.
Perhaps one of the most willfully ignorant US projects happened in 2010. The Department of Agriculture leaped into a $34.4 million program to push Afghan farmers
“What is troubling about this particular project is that it appears that many of these problems could reasonably have been foreseen and, therefore, possibly avoided,” Sopko wrote.
USDA admits that had it done a feasibility study in the beginning it could have avoided this failure. But it was even easier than that. All they needed to do was read a British study done two years earlier that showed soybeans and Afghanistan weren’t a good match.
“To date, positive outcomes for soybean production and the long-term operation of the soy processing plant have not occurred,” the USDA conceded to SIGAR. But all was not lost, USDA said. If production in 2014 was sufficiently high, an argument "could perhaps be made that a profitable soybean market was possible." USDA promised SIGAR it was monitoring the program closely.
But when ProPublica asked USDA recently what the outcome was for 2014, the department didn’t know. It hadn’t tracked the data.
That refusal to heed outside advice isn’t rare. For example, officials from the Department of Agriculture, the State Department and the local Afghan government all told USAID a tree sapling and seed distribution program was a bad idea. It cost too much and had been done before and failed because of corruption and theft. USAID still went ahead and spent nearly $8 million on the program.
The two departments and USAID sometimes even ignore advice from their own people.
The State Department spent $6.5 million on telecommunication towers despite several senior State Department, DOD and Afghan officials warning that Afghan telecom companies wouldn’t connect to the system and fuel costs for the generators were too high, SIGAR found. The towers went unused.
And in 2009, the State Department decided it would sink $106 million into refurbishing a compound in Mazer-e-Sharif to be a consulate — despite State Department insiders’ warnings that it wasn’t safe enough, according to an internal document revealed by The Washington Post. The compound was vulnerable to car bombs and spying, and was otherwise too dangerous to use, so the State Department had to abandon its plans there regardless of the millions spent.
The US has since leased the building to the Germans, but officials couldn’t answer basic questions about the lease, such as how long it was and how much it was for. A State Department spokeswoman suggested to ProPublica that maybe the Germans would be able to provide an answer.
Building in our Image: An Overly Ambitious Effort from the Start
In 2011, a task force of financial gurus brainstorming business projects for the military had an idea: Alternate fuels! That’s what Afghanistan needs to jumpstart its economy and bring in foreign investors.
A few years earlier a geological survey had found that the northern part of the country was blessed with natural gas reserves. Commercializing that resource would be a boon for Afghanistan, the task force figured, particularly since the country relies on imported gasoline it can barely afford.
It seemed like a good idea on paper. But, as expert after expert has noted, Afghanistan is not the US. It’s not even Pakistan. Getting the gas out of the ground and moved around the country would be a feat. There is no distribution system in Afghanistan for that kind of compressed gas — and building one in a war-torn country that has trouble keeping the lights on with generators was an expensive, if not laughable, notion.
That didn’t seem to matter. The task force sunk that’s another story.)
Then there was another very key problem: no customers. The average Afghan would have to shell out more than an entire year’s worth of salary to convert their cars to run on compressed natural gas. It costs about $700 and most Afghans bring home $690 annually. So unsurprisingly, the only people who used the station were the 120 Afghans the US paid to convert their cars.
The scale of what that project wanted to achieve was inappropriate in almost every aspect, and ProPublica found, it wasn’t unique in that regard. Afghanistan is at the bottom of almost every conceivable development ranking. Yet much of the reconstruction effort has seemed as if the US. and its allies were trying to create a new Afghanistan in their own image — both in the Western ideals superimposed on the Afghans and in the sheer ambition of the projects.
Giant warehouses around the country sit empty because there are no Afghan businesses to use them. At one industrial park, SIGAR found just four out of an intended 48 businesses. And those Afghan businesses that took the US up on its economic promises in Kandahar are struggling since the US military left, taking their generator fuel with them. The power is intermittent and profits for at least one business owner are literally melting away. He’s an ice cream distributor.
The same task force that thought up the gas station also built a 23,000-square-foot, cold-and-dry storage facility for nearly $3 million that was supposed to be a hub of agricultural development in Helmand. But it has gone unused. Before approving the project, the DOD didn’t check whether any Afghan businesses could make use of such a big warehouse. So far, none have been able to pull it off.
There are “too many people in DOD and State and AID who are trying to make Afghanistan look like northern Virginia,” said John Sopko, head of SIGAR. “That’s the problem.”
Sopko joked to his staff to be on the lookout for high speed rail proposals because with all the “boneheaded proposals” for the country it wouldn’t be an unlikely idea. Once, he said, he had to quash a plan under consideration to build solar-panelled bus shelters in Kabul.
In interviews, Sopko, who has been the inspector general for more than three years, occasionally apologizes for being flippant. But when the military spends half a billion dollars on airplanes that barely made it off the ground, he can’t help but be snarky about a helicopter program, saying: “At least they can fly.” (Of course, this being Afghanistan, there aren’t enough qualified pilots to fly them.)
This is not a new problem for the US in Afghanistan. A 1988 USAID report looked at American efforts in the country from 1950 to 1979 and concluded they were “overambitious, both as to scale and timing” and that, “in many ways, the program was larger than could be effectively administered by either the US or Afghan governments.”
Cue 2001, and the pattern started all over again.
The Afghan government had to be built from scratch — ministries of defense, agriculture, education, health, all the components that go into a modern government — when the Afghans didn’t even have a concept of what those were, USAID’s Larry Sampler said.
One project whose ambitions outstripped reality is the State Department and USAID’s plans for airspace management. At first glance, spending $11 million to train Afghans as air traffic controllers seems reasonable. The US military had been managing their skies, but would soon be packing up. But under closer examination, the question arises: What were they thinking?
Afghans are largely illiterate in their own language much less the English required for air traffic control, so the trainees would have to start with rudimentary language lessons. Plus they’d need on-the-job training. But no one asked the US military, which operated the airports, if that would be OK. It wasn’t: There was way too much classified information for the taking. Instead the Afghans would have to be sent overseas, but many couldn’t get visas and some of those who did never returned.
Plus only 36 Afghans were part of the program and Afghanistan needed 139 to run its airports. The kicker: turns out that most countries the size of Afghanistan contract out for airspace management.
“We have a disastrous experiment in Afghanistan to build a First World infrastructure on top of an impoverished nation,” said Tiefer of the wartime contracting commission. “We have to remember Afghanistan is one of the poorest countries on earth. It’s also one of the most corrupt countries on earth. You can’t build on top of sand.”.
Over-Gifting: Afghans Can’t Afford, Don’t Need What They Got
In a 14-year flurry of giving, the US built the Afghans an array of big-ticket projects, but whether they could afford to maintain, or even operate, this largess was rarely considered in any meaningful way.
The World Bank ranks Afghanistan’s ability to pay its bills as one of the world’s lowest. Right now, the country is significantly propped up by foreign aid whose future is uncertain. International donors have so far only committed at current levels through 2017.
A former SIGAR official listed three key tests for sustainability: Do they have the money? The technical capacity? The political will?
“Afghanistan generally fails all three.”
American “over-gifting” was a problem on virtually every project.
Consider health care. In 2011, the inspector general for USAID issued a bleak assessment of the ability of the Afghans to sustain any of the agency’s health programs. The Afghan government paid the tab for just 6 percent of the nation’s health care expenditures.
Yet USAID replaced a hospital in Gardez with a new, larger facility, saddling the Afghans with at least a 180 percent, and possibly as much as a 524 percent, increase in that annual bill. (Or it will when the hospital is finally completed. It’s years behind schedule.) Not far from that hospital, USAID replaced another that had cost $98,000 per year to run with one that costs $587,000 annually — nearly six times as much.
Sure, the Afghan Ministry of Public Health agreed to fund the new hospitals, but USAID didn’t address a fundamental question: Could it actually afford to do so? Without donor money, the answer is unequivocally “no.” And that’s the answer for almost every single aspect of the Afghan government, according to a dozen of military and civilian Afghan experts.
In the case of the Gardez hospital, the Afghans also told SIGAR the hospital wasn’t just beyond their means, but their needs, too. It’s 12 times the size of the old one and will require, the Afghans said, “additional staff for cleaning and security and further strain funding available for future hospital operations,” according to SIGAR’s report. The large generators required for the huge facility and a complex heating system ballooned the costs. The military built similarly outsized hospitals as well.
To be fair, many cite the improvements in health care as one of the more positive storylines in Afghanistan. Andrew Wilder, an Afghanistan expert with the United States Institute of Peace, said it was “a real success story,” and that the health ministry is actually one of the Afghans’ strongest. USAID’s Sampler said the availability of health care has soared since 2002, noting, for example, that there are three times as many midwives.
Then there’s the $335 million power plant in Kabul that some critics have dubbed the “fantasy plant.” Hastily planned in a rush to build it before the 2009 Afghan elections, it ended up $181 million over budget. The diesel-powered plant is so expensive to run, the Afghans are only using about 1 percent of its capacity. That intermittent use is actually harming the equipment and putting it on the path to “catastrophic failure,” USAID’s inspector general found. The Afghans would have to come up with $245 million per year to run the plant continuously as USAID originally intended.
USAID has long defended the plant as a vital piece of the energy supply in the capital region, noting that after an avalanche last year took out other power lines, it was able to provide some electricity to Kabul.
When the Afghans don’t, can’t or won’t sustain something, it means a running tab for the American taxpayers, because they end up covering the cost of upkeep. It’s not cheap. For instance, after the Afghans failed to take over operation and maintenance of all the security forces buildings, the US had to re-up a contract that costs $800 million.
One of the largest, most notorious, capital projects in Afghanistan is
The Afghans do little to care for them. USAID tried to mold the Ministry of Public Works into a competent bureaucracy, but so far it remains ineffective. There’s about a “$100 million maintenance gap and inadequate technical staff” at the ministry for “routine, periodic, preventive, emergency and winter maintenance,” USAID told SIGAR.
Adding to their quick deterioration: the roads were built to US weight standards, but Afghan trucks are notoriously overweight, Sopko said.
“What a stupid standard,” he said in a talk last year. “Who is in la-la land applying Bethesda to Afghanistan?”
Doomed to Repeat: An Afghan Security Force That Can’t Maintain Its Numbers, Buildings, Equipment. Even Its Front Lines.
If recent history is any guide, the outlook for the Pentagon’s ambitious and expensive goal to create an advanced army in Afghanistan isn’t promising.
One only has to look to Iraq, where the Pentagon spent more than $20 billion to build an army and hailed it a resounding success. Until ISIS came and the Iraqi security forces crumbled.
Meanwhile in Afghanistan, a far poorer and less sophisticated country, the military has replicated that training program, but tripled the investment, spending $65 billion — nearly 60 percent of the entire reconstruction budget. The plan: Create a well-schooled, 352,000-strong national Army and police force, and a robust air force able to secure the country on its own — all in a matter of years.
But this formidable objective ignored the Afghans’ pervasive corruption, fledgling leadership, and rudimentary capabilities. Not to mention Afghanistan’s complete inability to pay the bills of such a large, modern military — which costs upwards of $5 billion per year (If the Afghans spent every cent they collected in revenue on security and nothing else, they still couldn’t cover the cost.) The Pentagon has also had a perplexing tendency to repeat mistakes made in Iraq.
Success for the Afghan military hinged on turning a largely uneducated population into fighter pilots, into advanced mechanics, into logisticians for complicated supply needs spread across a nation.
“It takes generations to build an army no matter how much money you throw at it,” said retired Lt. Gen. Daniel Bolger, who was commanding general for the training mission in Afghanistan from late 2011 to 2013 and authored “Why We Lost.”
To put the arduousness of this task in perspective, consider the starting point: Teaching recruits to read. Seventy percent of Afghanistan is illiterate, and the percentage was even worse among the recruits — only 13 percent could write a basic sentence.
The Pentagon invested heavily in a literacy program, spending $200 million since 2010. But education apparently has its limits, even at that cost. The majority of recruits only go through basic classes in which the goals are to recognize and pronounce letters, write their names and some short words, count to 1,000 and do basic addition and subtraction.
The military has no idea if the training worked. The students’ proficiency had not been independently evaluated after the classes and the contractor hadn’t been required to track results. Some students “graduated” after attending class for as little as two hours a month, SIGAR found.
As for those graduates, the military hasn’t tracked them either. In fact, because so many policemen and soldiers bail on the security forces, the military doesn’t know how many who completed the training are still serving. The military’s best guess as of 2014 was that half of the force was illiterate, according to SIGAR’s report. A year earlier, the need for police and soldiers was such that the literacy program was suspended and many recruits went straight into service without even being able to write their name. Not surprisingly, tracking of weapons, ammunition and spare parts is lacking.
In the case of weapons, it’s deja vu of Iraq. Back in October 2006, an audit by Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction revealed a massive failure to track the 370,000 weapons — $130 million worth — bought for the Iraqi security forces since 2003. In response, the military said it had developed a system to “maintain accountability” for the weapons in the future.
It’s not hard to guess what happened next. In 2014, SIGAR discovered that the US was not certain of the whereabouts of $626 million worth of weapons it had provided Afghanistan forces. (Even that total was hard for the military to pin down. Initially officials said the total was $878 million in 2013 and then revised that to $626 million.) The military also wasted money on at least 112,000 weapons for the army and police that they didn’t need, including more than 83,000 extra AK-47s, SIGAR found.
The heavy equipment used by the world’s high-level militaries is far too much for the Afghans to handle. The Pentagon has shopped for the Afghan military like a new dad who gives his infant son a regulation basketball years before he can, or wants, to play the game. “They buy things and hope they’ll be utilized,” said Daniel Chen, SIGAR’s Deputy Assistant Inspector General for Audits & Inspections.
The Pentagon spent, for instance, nearly $936 million on Mi-17 helicopters and other equipment for the Special Mission Wingfor counternarcotics and counterterrorism — even though there were already too few pilots and mechanics for previously purchased helicopters, SIGAR found.
The special mission itself is on wobbly ground. The Afghans lack the personnel and the expertise for it, despite the estimated $109 million DOD spends annually to provide training, logistics and maintenance. As of October, the wing had just 60 percent of the personnel it needed, falling far short of the deadline last summer to hit full strength of 806 people. In 2013, SIGAR reported the DOD was having trouble recruiting more people because Afghans couldn't pass the literacy or criminal requirements. The wing did fly more than twice as many missions this year than it had in 2014.
The Pentagon vigorously disagreed with SIGAR’s assessment of the Special Mission Wing in 2013. A spokesman told ProPublica that the Afghans were “successfully operating these aircraft at a high operational tempo in counterterrorism and counterinsurgency operations.”
In a testament to how much the Afghan Air Force as a whole is struggling, Bolger said that “of all the air things we did,” the Special Mission Wing, even with its failings, is “the most practical one, no doubt.”
Eight years in, the Afghans are still reliant on the US for air support. This was on full display in September when the Taliban stormed the major city of Kunduz. Not only did the Afghan forces retreat and hand over much of the city with little fight — showing just how far short they are of being an independent fighting force — they also couldn’t retake the city a few weeks later without U.S. airstrikes.
“Despite our investments of large sums of money in various kinds of Afghan aircraft to support the security forces, the money appears wasted,” said Tiefer, of the wartime contracting commission.
When the Taliban overruns an Afghan city, the losses go well beyond the money invested in training. The United States poured more than $9 billion into military and police infrastructure.
In Kunduz, tens of millions worth of buildings and compounds were at risk, including a nearly $71 million Army garrison, a $17.7 million police headquarters and a $7.3 million border police headquarters that might never have been used. In 2013, SIGAR discovered just a dozen officers there and they were locked out of nine of the 12 buildings. ProPublica asked a Pentagon spokeswoman in September whether Afghan officers were now using the station, but she couldn’t answer. The standard military line is that once something has been given to the Afghans, the US government is not responsible for ensuring that it is being used as intended, or at all.
That kind of hands-off attitude leaves the door wide open for corruption, Sopko said. The importance of dealing with corruption’s corrosive effects should have been another lesson learned from Iraq. Yet SIGAR, other inspectors general, and the Government Accountability Office have all raised concerns that graft has run rampant, particularly in the security forces. “That’s the 800-pound gorilla in the room,” Sopko said.
For years there was no comprehensive strategy to combat corruption. In the security forces, siphoning of salary money is endemic, both in high-level government and at the local level. In 2014 alone, $45.5 million worth of US-funded salaries might have been stolen by those in charge of paying policemen, SIGAR reported. (The Afghan government is shifting to a safer policy of paying police through cell phones.) Then there was the millions in fake pension withholdings and fees for official stores that didn’t exist.
In a speech last year, Sopko said the Iraqi security collapse, which in many ways was linked to both petty and political corruption, was a warning sign for American efforts in Afghanistan. Should that same default befall Afghanistan, “it would be a tragedy for the American taxpayer.”
A” Is For Effort: In Afghanistan No One Has To Prove Success
For five years, USAID poured $150 million into a project with warm, but fuzzy, aspirations: helping isolated, unstable Afghan communities grow and feel more connected to their government. It was a part of the military’s broad campaign to win “hearts and minds.”
In all that time, though, USAID was never able to define what, exactly, the objectives of the
That, however, didn’t stop USAID from literally doubling down on the program in 2009, increasing its budget to $373 million.
SIGAR’s conclusion: scattered, small successes but no wins on any overarching goals. Ashley Jackson, a longtime non-governmental organization worker, was more blunt. USAID, she said, "would have been better off setting the money on fire."
USAID rebuffed SIGAR’s harsh assessment, saying its programs needed to be flexible because Afghanistan was a fluid, uncertain environment and goals changed as USAID officials became more experienced in the country.
With programs in general, Jonathan Carpenter, a senior State Department official, said there’s a fundamental difference between waste and efforts that are well thought out but the outcome was not as hoped. “It’s disappointing, but that’s not fraud, waste and abuse.”
Still, a consistent problem with many of the reconstruction programs SIGAR investigated is there’s no way to tell if they’re successful. The stated goals are often vague and shifting, and only rarely does anyone measure performance or impact. That makes fudging easy. If success isn’t defined, nothing fails.
The military, the State Department and USAID all like to have opening ceremonies and shake hands, said SIGAR’s Chen, “but they’re not looking at what happens after you cut the ribbon.”
For instance, the Pentagon built more than 1,000 infrastructure projects for the Afghan army and police and had “ zero insight” into how much they were used, he said.
“I was never ever asked in two years what the impact of my program was. Never,” said Sloan Mann, who worked for USAID in Afghanistan.
When those in charge do track performance at all, it’s often outputs not outcomes — like USAID reporting that it has trained 650 judges, but not whether those judges are now working in the judicial sector.
Even that basic counting is often suspect. For example, State Department and USAID officials boasted for years about building 680 schools — the $769 million education investment was routinely trotted out as a success story by top officials, including the president — but Buzzfeed found that the number was really 563. And many of them were empty, both Buzzfeed and SIGAR reported.
When it came to health clinics, SIGAR found that USAID had GPS data listing 13 that weren’t in Afghanistan and one that was in the Mediterranean Sea. USAID then gave different data to SIGAR. There were 55 fewer clinics, and in five provinces, every clinic location was different from the first list. USAID and SIGAR are still working out the discrepancies.
Often, too, the military, the State Department and USAID bragged about how much was spent on a program as if that alone was a sign of success. (USAID’s fact sheet on the community development program highlighted “more than 2,500 community-stabilization projects, representing an investment of $109 million.”)
Mann said he created his own indicators to track his progress because, as far as his bosses were concerned, “I was rewarded by how much money I spent.”
Measures of success are often malleable as well. The military, for example, ranks Afghan army units to assess their competence. But at one point the highest rating changed from “independent” to “independent with advisors.” As a result, more units were judged top tier, the Government Accountability Office said in 2012. SIGAR found the assessment tool was arbitrarily applied and not that useful anyway. Afterwards the military created a new tool, but classified it.
Zooming out to the 35,000-foot view, there are many indications of positive effects the reconstruction effort has had on the country. Carpenter, of the State Department, highlights that the capital city of Kabul now has near continuous power, cell phones are widely available, and there’s a free, vibrant press. About 43,000 women attended university last year, USAID’s Sampler said.
But overall, the Pentagon, the State Department and USAID don’t evaluate which of their programs are working well and which are not.
Searching for the good his critics so often say he ignores, John Sopko, the head of SIGAR, asked them in 2013 to list their top 10 best programs. None of them would do it.
The State Department and USAID wrote a joint letter in response, saying “given the wide range of assistance projects and programs our agencies have carried out, we do not compare individual projects against others, particularly over a decade of intensive rebuilding efforts, which result in constantly changing conditions for each project.”
Instead, they wrote broadly about their programs and listed off general indicators that life was getting better in Afghanistan, pointing in particular to health care and education. While reconstruction certainly played a role, some of the statistics cited resulted from a variety of factors, such as the country becoming less rural and more urban, Sopko wrote back to them a few months later. For example, the letter noted that 60 percent of the population had access to healthcare within an hour’s walk compared to just six percent in 2001.
“OK, maybe this is too difficult,” Sopko said about his response to them. “Give me some successes.”
The two departments and USAID again said they wouldn’t do it. Sopko had also asked them to list their 10 worst programs and why. But this, too, went unanswered. They barely mention programs that hadn’t worked. USAID briefly brought up just one, a road program that was ended because of poor results. Each of their letters cataloged general challenges of working in the country.
“Delays, fraud, poor performance, security challenges, contractor overcharges have been a too-constant feature of doing business in Afghanistan,” officials from the State Department and USAID wrote.
There was no mention of bad decisions or bad oversight or money wasted. Instead the letter focused on all they had done to cope with these challenges — and showed, Sopko said, they had completely missed the point.
Consequence-Free Zone: No One Is Ever Blamed For Failure
North of Kabul, where a distinctive, two-story courthouse is supposed to be, there’s only a shell of rebar and cracking concrete.
This should have been the centerpiece for Afghan national security trials, a prominent place to prosecute suspected insurgents. Instead, judges preside over a makeshift courtroom in a nearby building with fold-out tables.
It turns out no one with the US military made sure the courthouse was actually being built, a SIGAR inquiry found.
It was “the most gross display of incompetence I’ve probably ever seen,” said Scott Harmon, the SIGAR staffer who did the inspection.
The project, Harmon said, was bungled from the start. A Reserve Army staff sergeant, whose main qualification appeared to be that he was a plumber in civilian life, was put in charge. He told SIGAR that he had no idea what he was doing.
The Afghan contractor hired to build the courthouse had only been in business for about six months and there was very little documentation on why his company was chosen to do the work, Harmon said. The contractor hired a subcontractor that military commanders knew actively supported the Taliban. But since those commanders failed to share this information throughout the organization, the subcontractor had access to a US military-controlled area for two days — a serious security lapse, according to a SIGAR report.
With just basic foundation work done on the justice center, the contractor disappeared, taking almost $400,000 of US taxpayers’ money with him. The military subsequently abandoned the project.
The consequences for those mismanaging this misbegotten project? Nothing.
That was true in most of the SIGAR reports reviewed by ProPublica, despite botched management and poor decisions that resulted in sometimes hundreds of millions of dollars in waste.
There is no single chain of command responsible for the reconstruction effort. The Pentagon and the State Department in partnership with USAID run their own projects, often without coordination. The two departments are free to ignore one another, which allows each not only to dodge responsibility for overall reconstruction failures, but also for duplicative or contradictory programs.
The system doesn’t work, because “we don’t have one. We just respond,” said Bowen, the former Iraq IG, who found the same accountability problems in that country.
The culture within the two departments and USAID also treats any failings short of criminal as acceptable. In their responses to SIGAR and other critics, all three routinely shrug off failures as part of doing a challenging job.
SIGAR often turns up a specific person who failed in their duties, recommends some type of reprimand and the department declines. For example, in 2013, a United States Army Corps of Engineers official signed off on the installation of trash incinerators without even checking if they worked. They didn’t, and actually needed $1 million worth of fixes, SIGAR discovered. Yet the contractor was paid the full $5.4 million. USACE concluded no one was at fault. (The incinerators were never used and were dismantled when the military closed the base. As in other parts of the country, troops there were exposed to toxic fumes from open-air burn pits — another instance of the military skating without consequence. Burn pits were banned in 2011 to protect troops’ health.)
Officials also repeatedly let contractors off the hook for bad work and then hired them again. At an Afghan Army camp, Harmon recalled how SIGAR inspected phase 2 of the construction, which was happening to fix the problems from phase 1. Then there was a phase 3 to correct phase 2 and a phase 4 to correct phase 3. None of the contractors were held responsible for botched work that required pricey fixes, he said.
USAID handed over one of its largest and most important projects to a company that had already come in years late and millions over budget for a power plant in Kabul — and had been called out by both the agency’s inspector general and SIGAR for poor work. (The company had been problematic in Iraq, too.)
USAID “has a very extreme dependence upon its group of favorite contractors,” said Tiefer, of the wartime contracting commission.
Majority of the reconstruction effort was driven by the whims of the military agenda, rather than by thoughtful, long-term goals.
“The immediate needs of security trumped everything else” including “development perspectives,” according to Sampler, who has been working on Afghanistan for USAID since 2002.
The military said it saw reconstruction solely through the lens of defeating the insurgency.
“We’re going to build a school in that village, because the village is difficult and they’ll like us better if we build a school,” Parker, the British general, offered as an example.
The Pentagon and its commanding officers are rarely called to account for failed projects — or failed overall strategies for using reconstruction as a means to win over the population.
After the military went forward with building a $25 million headquarters that several high-ranking officers said wasn’t needed — and no one ever used — nothing happenedto the general who insisted it be built. In fact, afterwards he was made the Army inspector general.
USAID, on the other hand, has been Congress’ favorite target for cuts and frustrations about progress in Afghanistan. But even when USAID does try to police itself, shutting down underperforming or not strategically relevant projects, there’s still a gotcha moment, said Carpenter, of the State Department. “Somebody says, ‘Aha! 5 million taxpayer dollars went to waste.”
USAID is expected to be almost “omniscient” to know at the start that a program will work, he said. “The burden [for] success is very, very high.”
Success or Failure: We Spent $8 billion and There’s Now More Heroin Than Ever
Today Afghanistan is the king of heroin.
It sits on a narco throne as “the global leader in illicit opium cultivation and production,” according to SIGAR.
And that
In fact, the country grows more poppy now than it did before the war.
Afghanistan’s income from heroin is significant. Opium makes up about 10-15 percent of the country’s GDP, or around $3 billion a year, according to the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime.
And the Taliban has benefited. It actually made more money during the US counternarcotics effort than it did when it was in power in the 1990s, the U.N. reported in 2009. The Taliban used to earn $75 million to $100 million each year taxing the poppy cultivation, but by 2005 that had jumped to $90 million to $160 million.
The insurgent group was helped along by failed US agriculture programs that were intended to encourage farmers to grow legal crops. In seven provinces where USAID had at least one such program, the agency’s inspector general found that poppy growth actually increased.
SIGAR reported that many of the attempts to expand suitable land for legal farming just increased the acreage viable for poppy growth.
“We irrigated some of the finest poppy crops in the world,” retired Army Lt. Gen. Daniel Bolger said, deadpanning: “That was not the plan.”
The U.N. deemed it one of the world’s “most high profile cases of failed alternative development strategies,” saying “the focus on military victory rather than on poverty and food security has done little to incentivize poor farmers to grow licit crops.”
The military had also invested heavily in eradication in the early years of the war with the help of the DEA, but eventually abandoned that costly strategy.
For a few years, the overall effort looked successful. Many provinces were declared “poppy free” around 2008. But it didn’t last. For example, in one such province in eastern Afghanistan, there was “a fourfold increase in opium poppy cultivation between 2012 and 2013,” SIGAR said.
Poppy growth decreased in 2015, but the U.N. warned that drop could simply be reflecting a “major improvement” in measurement tools, and other analysts pointed to drought and blight in the biggest growing regions as key factors.
The large sum spent so far on fighting the drug trade took some White House staffers and a top official at the State Department by surprise, according to Sopko. They didn’t know the effort had cost that much until SIGAR came out with a report, he said.
Much of the $8 billion went to developing the Afghan government’s ability to fight the drug trade. So, Sopko said, one positive outcome is that judges and prosecutors have been trained to handle criminal cases, and there is a special Air Force wing — albeit one that SIGAR has raised concerns about — that the US military has been training to fly counternarcotics missions.
About $108 million also went to drug treatment and prevention programs, ProPublica found.
But overall, Sopko said, “the vast majority has been wasted.”
Some experts who have studied the reconstruction effort and DEA agents who participated in the counternarcotics mission concede the total spent was much too high, but they question whether there was an alternative given that it was such a tremendous problem.
“You can’t just not do anything,” said Craig Chretien, a retired DEA agent who worked on the Afghanistan drug task force. “To do nothing would be significantly worse.”
Tiefer from the wartime spending commission agreed. “It’s not clear there was some better strategy to follow.”
The drug trade feeds corruption, Sopko said. Dealing with both are intrinsically tied to reconstruction success, he said, which is why the failure to have an effective strategy “is one of these things I get so upset about.”
When a farmer grows poppy, he pays off the local officials, and the money goes up the chain and leads to corruption of entire institutions, Chretien said. Part of the program was to demonstrate to the Afghans that was why they shouldn’t let the drug trade go on, he said.
To American taxpayers, the idea the money was well spent might be a hard sell.
“The test to a person of common sense is that we should have something to show for that much money, and we don’t have anything to show for it,” Tiefer said. “In that sense it’s been a waste.”
The Pentagon and the State Department blamed a lack of Afghan government support for the failures. In a letter to Sopko, the State Department wrote that there was “no silver bullet” to deal with the drug trade and that “our counternarcotics goals can be accomplished only when these are also Afghan counternarcotics goals. We look forward to the new Afghan government assuming a leadership role in this regard.”
In October, the US signed on to the Afghan’s new counternarcotics strategy for the next five years and agreed to pay $350 million for it.
So was spending the $8 billion and counting worthwhile? You be the judge.
http://www.pri.org/stories/2015-12-18/behold-american-taxpayer-what-happened-nearly-half-billion-your-dollars
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