Tens of thousands of AK-47s and $1.3 billion "missing" in Afghanistan

 "Corruptus in Extremis"

• SNAFU  -  "Situation Normal: All Fucked Up."
• The insanity of government never ends.  Mountains of U.S. provided weapons and cold hard cash are "missing" in Afghanistan.   Meanwhile the American military is protecting Drug Lords.  Ain't life just fucking grand?

(McClatchy News)  -  The Defense Department can’t account for $1.3 billion that was shipped to force commanders in Afghanistan from 2004 to 2014 for critical reconstruction projects, 60 percent of all such spending under an emergency program, an internal report released Thursday concludes.

The missing money was part of the relatively small amount of Afghanistan spending that was routed directly to military officers in a bid to bypass bureaucracy and rush the construction of urgently needed roads, bridges, schools, hospitals, water treatment plants and other essential infrastructure.

About 70 percent of the $100 billion the United States has spent to rebuild Afghanistan during more than 13 years of war went through the Pentagon, with the rest distributed by the U.S. Agency for International Development and other civilian departments.

A yearlong investigation by John F. Sopko, the U.S. special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction, found that the Pentagon couldn’t – or wouldn’t – provide basic information about what happened to 6 in 10 dollars of $2.26 billion it had spent over the course of a decade on the Commander’s Emergency Response Program.

“In reviewing this data, SIGAR found that the Department of Defense could only provide financial information relating to the disbursement of funds for CERP projects totaling $890 million (40 percent) of the approximately $2.2 billion in obligated funds at that time,” Sopko’s report says.

When Sopko’s staff divided the Pentagon expenditures into 20 categories set under the emergency program, from transportation and education to health care, agriculture, water and sanitation, by far the largest category was a 21st that the inspector general termed “unknown.”

The special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction, a post Congress established in 2008 to track U.S. nonmilitary aid to Afghanistan, has issued dozens of reports documenting billions of dollars lost to waste or corruption.

In a report released last July, Sopko and his staff found that many of the tens of thousands of excess AK-47 assault rifles and other weapons the Pentagon had shipped to Afghanistan since 2004 had gone missing, raising concerns that they’d fallen into the hands of Taliban or other insurgents.

A report released in October 2013 concluded that the United States was continuing to give Afghan security forces a planned $1.4 billion to buy gasoline through 2018 despite evidence that some of the money had been siphoned off for other, unexplained, uses.

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As an added bonus the U.S. and NATO have been protecting Afghan Drug Lords since the 2002 invasion.

A
2001 Blast from the Past Article
Only a "crazy" fringe person would suggest that the US and NATO went into Afghanistan in order to keep the supply of drugs flowing.  Only a conspiracy nut would suggest that governments want to keep their populations in a perpetual drugged stupor so they will not question their Masters.  It would be wrong to say these things, so I will not do it.

The U.S. - Protecting Afghan drug lords since 2002.
Also see our 2012 article:
What Drug War? NATO increased Afghanistan opium production