Failed Afghan road project shows pitfalls of U.S. efforts

McClatchy Newspapers By Shashank Bengali Thursday, Nov. 10, 2011
GHAZNI, Afghanistan - Heading back from a remote section of Ghazni province in September, U.S. Navy Cmdr. Tristan Rizzi radioed his base in eastern Afghanistan and said he wanted to take a slight detour.

Rizzi had his Chinook helicopter fly over the site of a long-stalled, U.S.-financed road project on which the Afghan contractors had pledged repeatedly to resume work. From the air, Rizzi saw a vacant site and no sign of the contractors. Once on the ground, he dialed one of them from a cellphone and asked where they were.

The contractor said they were working on the road — to which Rizzi replied, "No, you're not."

Two weeks later, alleging corruption and theft, U.S. officials in Ghazni terminated the $10 million road contract, pulling the plug on a closely watched infrastructure project in this strategic province and putting themselves at odds with a powerful governor who coalition forces had hoped would be a key ally.

From 2008 to 2010, the U.S. government paid $4 million to RWA, a consortium of three Afghan contractors — only to see it pave less than two-thirds of a mile on a road that's supposed to stretch 17.5 miles. The contractors said the area had become too violent to work in, but U.S. and Afghan provincial officials think that two of the principals absconded to New Zealand and the Netherlands, having pocketed much of the cash.

U.S. officials describe the Ghazni affair in positive terms: They saved the $6 million that remained on the contract for other projects, terminated RWA's existing contracts and blackballed it from future work, and say they're ready to cooperate with Afghan investigators should they decide to pursue legal action against the consortium.

But it's also a reminder that corruption, violence and political disputes continue to plague U.S. reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan.

Even before the failed road project, RWA was notorious in Ghazni because one of its principals, Ghulam Seddiq Rasouli, served jail time about three years ago after Taliban insurgents ambushed one of his construction teams and his security guards fired back indiscriminately, killing at least one civilian, according to Afghan intelligence officials. U.S. officials — who've awarded Rasouli multiple construction contracts — apparently were unaware of his legal difficulties.

As the U.S.-led military coalition plans to hand control of the nation's security to Afghan forces in three years, American diplomats and military officials say they're trying to clean up a contracting system in which hundreds of millions of dollars meant for reconstruction were misspent or allocated to unsavory characters, including those tied to violence against civilians or coalition forces.

Last year, a McClatchy investigation found that U.S. government funding for at least 15 large-scale Afghan programs and projects ballooned from just over $1 billion to nearly $3 billion — despite questions about their effectiveness or cost — in the headlong rush to rebuild the country and shore up its struggling government,.