[House Hearing, 112 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Printing Office]
INVESTIGATING WASTE, FRAUD AND ABUSE IN AFGHANISTAN
=======================================================================
HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND INVESTIGATIONS
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED TWELFTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
JUNE 6, 2012
__________
Serial No. 112-162
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Foreign Affairs
Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.foreignaffairs.house.gov/
or
http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/
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COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS
ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida, Chairman
CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, New Jersey HOWARD L. BERMAN, California
DAN BURTON, Indiana GARY L. ACKERMAN, New York
ELTON GALLEGLY, California ENI F.H. FALEOMAVAEGA, American
DANA ROHRABACHER, California Samoa
DONALD A. MANZULLO, Illinois DONALD M. PAYNE, New Jersey--
EDWARD R. ROYCE, California deceased 3/6/12 deg.
STEVE CHABOT, Ohio BRAD SHERMAN, California
RON PAUL, Texas ELIOT L. ENGEL, New York
MIKE PENCE, Indiana GREGORY W. MEEKS, New York
JOE WILSON, South Carolina RUSS CARNAHAN, Missouri
CONNIE MACK, Florida ALBIO SIRES, New Jersey
JEFF FORTENBERRY, Nebraska GERALD E. CONNOLLY, Virginia
MICHAEL T. McCAUL, Texas THEODORE E. DEUTCH, Florida
TED POE, Texas DENNIS CARDOZA, California
GUS M. BILIRAKIS, Florida BEN CHANDLER, Kentucky
JEAN SCHMIDT, Ohio BRIAN HIGGINS, New York
BILL JOHNSON, Ohio ALLYSON SCHWARTZ, Pennsylvania
DAVID RIVERA, Florida CHRISTOPHER S. MURPHY, Connecticut
MIKE KELLY, Pennsylvania FREDERICA WILSON, Florida
TIM GRIFFIN, Arkansas KAREN BASS, California
TOM MARINO, Pennsylvania WILLIAM KEATING, Massachusetts
JEFF DUNCAN, South Carolina DAVID CICILLINE, Rhode Island
ANN MARIE BUERKLE, New York
RENEE ELLMERS, North Carolina
ROBERT TURNER, New York
Yleem D.S. Poblete, Staff Director
Richard J. Kessler, Democratic Staff Director
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Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations
DANA ROHRABACHER, California, Chairman
MIKE KELLY, Pennsylvania RUSS CARNAHAN, Missouri
RON PAUL, Texas DAVID CICILLINE, Rhode Island
TED POE, Texas KAREN BASS, California
DAVID RIVERA, Florida
C O N T E N T S
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Page
WITNESSES
Mr. John Hutton, Director, Acquisition and Sourcing Management,
U.S. Government Accountability Office.......................... 15
Mr. Charles Johnson, Jr., Director, International Affairs and
Trade, U.S. Government Accountability Office................... 17
Mr. Larry Sampler, Jr., Senior Deputy Assistant to the
Administrator, Office of Afghanistan and Pakistan Affairs, U.S.
Agency for International Development........................... 48
LETTERS, STATEMENTS, ETC., SUBMITTED FOR THE HEARING
The Honorable Dana Rohrabacher, a Representative in Congress from
the State of California, and chairman, Subcommittee on
Oversight and Investigations:
New York Times article, ``Intrigue in Karzai Family as an
Afghan Era Closes,'' dated June 3, 2012...................... 2
Prepared statement............................................. 11
London Daily Telegraph article, ``Captured Taliban Bombers
Freed After Paying Bribes, Say Americans,'' dated June 5,
2012......................................................... 38
Mr. John Hutton and Mr. Charles Johnson, Jr.: Prepared statement. 18
Mr. Larry Sampler, Jr.: Prepared statement....................... 51
APPENDIX
Hearing notice................................................... 70
Hearing minutes.................................................. 71
INVESTIGATING WASTE, FRAUD AND ABUSE IN AFGHANISTAN
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WEDNESDAY, JUNE 6, 2012
House of Representatives,
Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations,
Committee on Foreign Affairs,
Washington, DC.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 2:31 p.m., in
room 2200, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Dana Rohrabacher
(chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.
Mr. Rohrabacher. I call to order this hearing of the
Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee of the House Foreign
Affairs Committee, and I was just about to ask for unanimous
consent to move ahead.
All right. So what we will be doing is we both have some
opening statements, and then we will proceed with the
witnesses, and hopefully we can be done here--votes will start
around 4:30. So our goal is to be totally out of here and done
with the hearing by 4:30. Let's see if we can do that.
So I will begin, with your permission, begin with an
opening statement.
James Risen has had a story in the New York Times, in fact
it was this last Sunday, which focused on the family of Afghan
President Hamid Karzai.
[The article referred to follows:]
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Mr. Rohrabacher. Risen reported and I quote:
``Members of his family are trying to protect their
status, weighing how to hold onto power while secretly
fighting among themselves for the control of the
fortune they have amassed in the last decade. One
brother, Qayum Karzai, is mulling a run for the
Presidency when his brother steps down in 2014.''
There have been previous reports that Hamid himself might
try to change or circumvent the constitution to serve a
prohibited third 5-year term. Risen quotes a business partner
of the Karzai family as saying, and I quote:
``We have an illegitimate and irresponsible government
because of Karzai and his family.''
I have long been concerned about this problem, because the
U.S. has unwisely bet everything on Hamid Karzai, giving him
unprecedented power, in an overly centralized government that
contradicts Afghan history and culture with its over-
centralization. Ten years of his rule has left the country
teetering on the brink of collapse, even with the backing of
half a trillion American dollars, and a vast and NATO Army at
his disposal, from which some 2,000 Americans have been killed,
and thousands more have been grievously wounded. And we are now
on the hook for perhaps another decade of blood and treasure
after 2014 to maintain an inherently flawed strategy.
I wanted the GAO to look specifically into business deals
involving Hamid Karzai and his family and their inner circle
that have used U.S. funds. I was told that the GAO could not
provide answers because, and I quote:
``The lack of complete data on U.S. contracts with
performance in Afghanistan, the difficulty in obtaining
publicly releasable information on Afghan firms, and
the improbability that ownership interest in firms
could be identified. Additionally, the database does
not provide information on subcontract awards.''
USAID is one of those agencies that is not keeping adequate
records on who is benefiting from American aid, and I want to
know why. I want to know exactly why that is the situation, or
that can be disputed. If a reporter for the New York Times can
find out about Karzai's family, why can't USAID? I approached
the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction
and was told that they couldn't do it because they only have
120 people working for them, working there, it said.
Well, as has been widely reported, President Karzai denied
me entry into Afghanistan as part of a congressional delegation
in April. I have serious concerns about the strategy we have
been pursuing in Afghanistan, but what has made the debate
personal for Karzai, is this investigation into the corruption
of his administration and what I may call a decentralization
strategy that I support, and perhaps that is making him upset
as well, because what reforms I am calling for could mean a
great deal to the family fortune, so to speak.
Many people in Washington as well as in Kabul do not want
me or anyone else to look into the basket to see if all the
eggs are still there. That includes the State Department, which
has gone all in for Karzai, but it also includes Congress,
where my request to hold hearings, conduct investigations, and
explore alternative strategies for Afghanistan have been denied
time and again. Indeed, I wonder if someone will cut off the
broadcast of this session before it concludes, which is what
happened last time I held such a hearing.
Too many careers have been tied to Karzai; so many that the
campaign is now out to save him. Instead, we are ending up
trying to save him rather than save Afghanistan. Indeed, I was
told not to mention Karzai in the title of this hearing. SIGAR
has reported Afghanistan is plagued by corruption and is tied
for third as the most corrupt country in the world, according
to Transparency International's Annual Corruption Perception
Index. Corruption threatens the U.S. military and
reconstruction missions as well as the Afghan Government's
legitimacy among its own people.
Unfortunately, the records being kept by the United States
Government agencies and departments, including USAID, and the
lack of access to the Afghan Government's records, has made it
virtually impossible for the GAO to do its job or to help this
Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee do its job to
safeguard the interests of the United States and the American
taxpayer.
There has, however, been a scandal so big that it could not
be hidden by the bureaucracy. That was the Kabul Bank case. The
Kabul Bank was the largest commercial bank in Afghanistan and
held one-third of the entire banking system's assets. It was
looted through a series of insider loans that were never meant
to be paid back. The bank collapsed and was bailed out to the
tune of $825 million according to the IMF. One of the central
figures in that bank scandal was Hamid Karzai's brother,
Mahmoud Karzai, who was given interest-free loans which he then
used in part to buy a stake in the bank itself.
It has been reported that much of the money loaned out by
the bank was used to speculate on real estate in Dubai. So
there was not even a pretext that the capital was being used to
provide development for the Afghan economy. Which brings us to
the U.S. Agency for International Development, which will be
represented here today on our second panel.
USAID and its contractors were involved in advising the
Afghan Central Bank on regulations and supervising the
operation of the banking system at the time the Kabul Bank
scandal was taking place. USAID has claimed it could not have
prevented such fraud, and I am hoping its witnesses today, or
witness today, can elaborate on why it could not do so. The
U.S. used the the Bank of Kabul for many, many transactions, so
we had leverage and we had a great deal relationship with the
people running the bank.
For Fiscal Year 2013, the USAID request for Afghanistan is
$5.2 billion. Since 2002, USAID has awarded $15.2 billion in
Afghanistan reconstruction projects. However, a majority staff
report from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on June 8th
of 2011, found that, and I quote.
``Roughly 80 percent of USAID's resources are being
spent in Afghanistan's restive south and east. Only 20
percent is going to the rest of the country.''
Would it not be better as a long-term strategy in a civil
war-type situation to build up the capabilities and areas that
were loyal, or more loyal to you and to our country--for
example, the northern--the areas where the Northern Alliance is
more dominant? There is an old adage that goes: ``I don't need
to pay my enemies to hate me because they will do it for
free.'' It is our friends we want to reward.
So there should be a distribution of aid--and there should
have been all along--that is much fairer and more balanced than
simply this southern-tier push to focus aid that we have seen,
that we now know about in Afghanistan. The GAO reports have
raised questions about how well USAID has protected American
taxpayer dollars in Afghanistan, and I was shocked to learn
from one report that it was only in January 2011 that USAID
created a process to vet non-U.S. contractors regarding whether
they were a terrorist or organized-crime funding risk.
How many years of counterterrorist campaign does it take to
start to worry about whether American funds are going into the
pockets of terrorists? Part of the problem is that so many
contracts get passed down through multilayers of
subcontractors, so somebody gets the money. Then there comes
the subcontractor, and who the heck knows who the
subcontractor's subcontractor is. At each step the money is
taken out of the stream, but the work then is passed on to
someone else. It is less a process of construction than a
systematic process of looting conducted by a labyrinth of shady
connections that no one seems to be able to keep track of, and
that everyone knows about the ties that it has--or whoever they
are dealing with have to the government.
So Afghani leaders can get rich through a $300 million
power plant in Kabul that is too expensive to run, or a power
plant in Kandahar that has no electric grid to which it can be
connected, or a Helmand River dam whose generator is rusted as
the project has stalled.
We have in Ghazni Province, $4 million went to an Afghan
firm whose owners fled to the Netherlands with the money after
paving less than a mile of a 17-mile road project. I am hoping
that both the GAO and the USAID can suggest a better way to
control American money going forward through 2014 and beyond.
I hope we can find an alternate strategy in Afghanistan,
but whatever we decide to do, we need to make sure the money we
spend actually goes to support our objectives, especially
doesn't go to support people who hate the goals that we have
laid down and our people are giving their lives for as we
speak. But that hasn't been done so far.
In 2010, I was briefed on a new software system that can be
seamlessly inserted into all of the American taxpayer
expenditures of aid funds for Afghanistan or any other
recipient. If we insist that our aid be spent from a separate
account and paid by a check, then this software will track
every transaction as our money moves through the local economy,
including the initial transaction involving our money that is
made to a recipient outside of Afghanistan.
So I think the technology exists that we can get the job
done if the will exists to try to get control of this
situation. Corruption must be stamped out. It would be ironic,
as well as tragic, if one of the results of American
development assistance was to provide the Afghan oligarchy in
which the U.S. has invested so much, the means to implement
personal exit strategies if things get rough.
Most of the Karzai family and its cronies did flee the
country the last time the Taliban invaded, and only came back
to Afghanistan when they were protected by United States
troops. In contrast, the Northern Alliance fought the Taliban
every step of the way, never quit, and were on the vanguard
when we fought to drive the Taliban out of Afghanistan in 9/11.
We do not want cowardly allies who will take their ill-
gotten gains and cut and run, rather than stand and defend
their country. We need allies who are rooted in the country,
not sitting on huge foreign bank accounts and willing to take
off once the going gets rough.
With that said, I will now yield for an opening statement
of any length that you would like to Mr. Carnahan, our ranking
member.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Rohrabacher follows:]
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Mr. Carnahan. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and to our witnesses
for being with us today. This is an important hearing, and is
an important part of continuing the bipartisan tradition of
this subcommittee conducting rigorous oversight of U.S.
reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan.
Two years ago, as I chaired the committee, we conducted a
set of hearings, again bipartisan, on our reconstruction
efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan and looked at what lessons the
administration should learn in order to reduce the rampant
waste, fraud, corruption, and abuse of U.S. taxpayer dollars.
We heard from Stuart Bowen, the Special Inspector General for
Iraq Reconstruction. He described an adhocracy with blurred
chains of command between DoD, State, and USAID. He emphasized
the lack of institutional structure and human resources to
effectively perform stabilization and reconstruction
operations.
For the past several years I have been working on
developing legislation to increase accountability, efficiency,
and transparency in our overseas contingency operations. And I
am sure we will hear from our witnesses today reforms have been
implemented and improvements have been made on some fronts, but
continuing to make real immeasurable progress in these areas is
absolutely essential, especially as our troop levels decrease
and Congress is tightening budgets across the government.
No doubt the environment in which USAID, State, and our
international partners operate is difficult and complex. But
the work they do is critically important to the U.S., is vital
to our national security interest, and reflects the moral
values of who we are as a country. That is why regular and
detailed oversight is required.
Our development programs help build local capacity to
invest in the programs that increase the political
participation of women, help build the democratic institutions,
expand health programs for women and children, and help
transition the Afghan economy away from an overreliance on its
scarce natural resources.
I would like to commend the work of our diplomats who are
working under complicated and sometimes dangerous
circumstances. As it is our job to ensure strict accounting of
all U.S. taxpayer funds, I commend the chairman, again, for
calling this hearing and I look forward to hearing from our
witnesses today.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Thank you very much.
Our first panel will be the Government Accountability
Office, the GAO. John Hutton, who will be testifying as a
director at the U.S. Government Accountability Office working
for the Acquisition and Sources Management Team; in this
capacity he provides direct support to congressional
committees, and Members on a range of acquisition and sourcing
issues. Throughout his 34-year career at the GAO, I remember
that you had a full head of hair and it was totally dark hair
when you first started there.
Mr. Hutton. Yes, sir--and mustache.
Mr. Rohrabacher. But throughout that long 34-year career at
the GAO he has worked on a wide range of issues. Prior to his
appointment to the Senior Executive Service he lead the GAO's
reviews related to such diverse issues as Iraq and Afghanistan
reconstruction, U.S. Mexico border infrastructure, U.S. and
international efforts to combat AIDS and the promotion of U.S.
exports. So you had all of the easy jobs that were given to you
over the years. He holds two master's degrees; one in public
administration, Syracuse, Maxwell School; and in one national
security strategy from the National War College.
He will be presenting the GAO testimony, but with him to
help answer questions, is Charles Michael Johnson Jr., a senior
executive with the U.S. Government Accountability Office. Mr.
Johnson, is the director responsible for the GAO's portfolio
addressing U.S. international counterterrorism and security-
related issues. Prior to joining the GAO's international
affairs and trade team, Mr. Johnson was assistant director in
the GAO's Homeland Security and Justice team. He spent a year
detailed to the House of Representatives Homeland Security
Committee, between 2005 and 2006, where he worked on border
security and immigration issues. Mr. Johnson graduated summa
cum laude from the University of Maryland with a degree in
business administration.
So Mr. Hutton, you may proceed and then we will go on to a
second panel in which Larry Sampler, Senior Deputy Assistant to
the Administrator of the Office of Afghanistan and Pakistan
Affairs at the U.S. Agency for International Development will
be testifying. And you may proceed with what time you may
choose to consume, hopefully around 5 to 10 minutes.
STATEMENT OF MR. JOHN HUTTON, DIRECTOR, ACQUISITION AND
SOURCING MANAGEMENT, U.S. GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY OFFICE
Mr. Hutton. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Chairman Rohrabacher,
Ranking Member Carnahan, and members of the subcommittee. Thank
you for inviting Mr. Johnson and I to discuss the
accountability and oversight of U.S. funds to assist
Afghanistan. GAO has issued over 100 reports and testimonies on
U.S. efforts, including those managed by USAID, DoD, and State
in support of congressional oversight of the nearly $90 billion
appropriated since 2002, to help secure, stabilize, and rebuild
Afghanistan. Our work complements that of the Special Inspector
General for Afghanistan Reconstruction and the Inspector
Generals from DoD, USAID, and State.
Now, drawing on past GAO work, our statement focuses on
USAID and our findings in three key areas.
First, our reports have shown that USAID faces systemic
challenges that have hindered its management and oversight of
contracts and assistance instruments, such as grants, used to
carry out development programs and support USAID's mission in
Afghanistan. These challenges include gaps in planning for the
use of contractors and assistant recipients, and having
visibility into their numbers.
Now, while reliable data on contractors and grant
recipients are a starting point for ensuring proper management
and oversight, we have reported for the last 4 years on USAID's
limited visibility into its Afghanistan contracts and grants as
well as the personnel working under them.
While USAID, along with State and DoD, agreed in 2008 to
use a common database to track statutorily required information
on contracts and associated personnel, we found in September
2011, that the database still does not reliably track such
information.
Further, other sources of such information used by USAID
have their own limitations. USAID has taken some actions to
mitigate risks associated with contracting in Afghanistan.
Under its Accountable Assistance for Afghanistan Initiative,
USAID began vetting prospective non-U.S. contractors and grant
recipients in 2011. Vendor vetting is intended to counter the
risk of U.S. funds being diverted to support criminal or
insurgent activity.
At the time of our June 2011 report, we recognized that
USAID's vetting process was in its early stages and recommended
that USAID formalize a risk-based approach to identify and vet
the highest-risk vendors. We also made a recommendation to
promote interagency collaboration with DoD and State to better
ensure that non-U.S. vendors potentially posing a risk are
vetted, all of which USAID agreed to do.
Second, we have identified weaknesses in USAID's oversight
of program performance. We appreciate that the USAID mission in
Afghanistan is overseeing programs in a high-risk security
environment and has experienced high staff turnover, both of
which hinder oversight. However, USAID has not consistently
followed its own performance management and evaluation
procedures in Afghanistan, which makes its programs more
vulnerable to corruption, waste, fraud, and abuse. While we
found in 2010 that implementing partners routinely reported on
program's progress, USAID did not always approve the
performance indicators being used and did not ensure that
targets were established as required. USAID concurred with our
recommendations to ensure that programs have such performance
indicators and targets and to consistently assess and use
program data and evaluations to shape the current and the
future programs.
I will now turn to our third key area and that is the
accountability for direct assistance. That is funding that is
provided either bilaterally to individual Afghan Ministries, or
multilaterally to trust funds administered by the World Bank
and the U.N. In 2011, we found that USAID did not complete pre-
award risk assessments such as determining the awardee's
capability to independently manage and account for funds for
bilateral direct assistance awards. Similarly, USAID had not
consistently complied with its multilateral risk assessment
practices. For example, USAID did not conduct a risk assessment
before awarding an additional $1.3 billion to the World Bank's
Afghanistan Reconstruction Trust Fund. Such assessments and
other internal controls are key to providing reasonable
assurances that agency assets are safeguarded against fraud and
mismanagement.
Based on our recommendations, USAID updated its policies to
require pre-award risk assessments for all bilateral direct
assistance awards, and also revised the guidance on pre-award
risk assessments for the World Bank and other public
international organizations.
In closing, we have made numerous recommendations aimed at
improving USAID's management, accountability, and oversight of
assistance funds in Afghanistan. USAID has generally agreed and
has taken steps to address them. Mr. Chairman, robust
management and oversight of taxpayer's funds is paramount,
particularly in challenging environments like Afghanistan where
institutional capacity is weak.
We would be happy to respond to any questions you may have.
Mr. Rohrabacher. And Mr. Johnson, you are just here to jump
in. Did you have something that you would like to just add--or
add to that?
STATEMENT OF MR. CHARLES JOHNSON, JR., DIRECTOR, INTERNATIONAL
AFFAIRS AND TRADE, U.S. GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY OFFICE
Mr. Johnson. Basically, what I would like to highlight a
little bit more is that the USAID Administrator in 2010
committed to this Congress that it would not award any
additional bilateral direct assistance to the Afghan Ministries
until pre-award risk assessments were done. We did find some
cases, as John pointed out, where after that commitment was
made in 2010 that there were additional awards done without
that being required.
Recently, we have discovered that there is a new policy put
in place to help ensure that that doesn't take place in the
future. And just to further elaborate on the World Bank, or the
public international organizations issues where the U.S. is
relying on these institutions for safeguards and controls, I
would have to note that the U.S. has been working with the
World Bank in particular to try to enhance U.S. access to
certain information. That is a process for which they have
ongoing negotiations with the World Bank.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Hutton and Mr. Johnson
follows:]
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Mr. Rohrabacher. Okay. Let me, it is very frustrating to
think that we are, you know, talking about people, we are
saying we made these commitments back in 2010, but 2010 was
years after we had been involved in Afghanistan. How much aid
has the United States given Afghanistan since the liberation of
Afghanistan from the Taliban?
Mr. Johnson. Well, I guess I will take that question. I
think our estimate is that it is close to $90 billion, and that
does not include the cost of the U.S. troops, which is an
enormous cost on top of that.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Right. So $90 billion in actual foreign
aid, or American aid, not American military aid, but sort of,
we are talking about, you know, economic.
Mr. Johnson. Well, that aid would focus on security,
government and development-related projects. So it would be a
significant amount that is actually paying for the Afghan
security forces, the Afghan Army and police, a significant
amount.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Okay. How much did we give them that is
nonmilitary oriented? I mean, it is one thing to understand
that we had to give so much and so many AK-47s that we had to
buy from somebody and give it to some military units there, but
what--how much have we given the development assistance, and
what we would consider to be humanitarian, and civilian aid?
Mr. Johnson. Okay, the best estimate I can come up with,
given work we have done that has looked at the Afghan security
forces funds has been about $43 billion, roughly, recently. So
I would estimate roughly close to $46 billion or $47 billion in
terms of aid that has gone there. But we have reported--we did
a report looking at the Afghan Government reliance on donors
for money, which as we know, the Afghan Government cannot
afford to sustain itself in some of the projects that we are
putting in place to which the U.S. has been the largest
contributor.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Right. I am looking for a figure. How much
in civilian aid have we given Afghanistan since the liberation
from the Taliban?
Mr. Johnson. My estimate for--would be----
Mr. Rohrabacher. Nonmilitary aid.
Mr. Johnson. Nonmilitary, nonsecurity assistance in terms
of expenditure numbers, that is the best number I have, would
be roughly somewhere in the ballpark of $12-15 billion.
Expenditures is what I am saying, where money has actually been
disbursed and hit the ground. There is money in the pipeline,
obviously, but in terms of disbursements----
Mr. Rohrabacher. Right. So you are saying that we have
actually--and that is over this last 10-year period, basically.
Mr. Johnson. Well, my numbers go from 2006 to 2010, but
basically, that is where the surge has taken place. In the
earlier years the numbers were much smaller. So my range would
be somewhere in the range of $12-15 billion, is the range I can
give you. We can go back and give you the number going back to
2002, but since 2006 up through 2010, the expenditure numbers
show roughly about $12 billion.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Since 2006.
Mr. Johnson. Right.
Mr. Rohrabacher. But how many years have we been in
Afghanistan before 2006?
Mr. Johnson. We have been there since 2002. A lot of the
money early on was security-related money. The data in the
reports that we recently noted, the U.S. has paid for 90
percent of the security. We probably pay roughly about 36 or 37
percent of the nonsecurity. So the donor international
community actually has contributed more in terms of expenditure
in the nonsecurity area than the U.S. There has been a shift in
that area.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Okay, I am going to go--am I off base by
saying that when we take a look at what we have spent in the
civilian sector in terms of not, you know, not arming people,
not the security, but the civilian sector aid since the Taliban
was kicked out of the country--and that is long before 2006--
would I say, would $20 billion be sort of in the right range?
Mr. Johnson. It depends on if you are talking funds
allocated versus obligated or disbursed. They are different
numbers there. What I gave you was disbursement numbers,
meaning funds that have hit the ground. The number would go up
closer to $45 billion if you are talking about money that has
been either awarded or allotted toward nonsecurity related
stuff in Afghanistan.
Mr. Rohrabacher. $45 billion? All right. Your staff just
gave you a little help there.
Mr. Johnson. Staff just gave me a new number. Thank you.
Mr. Rohrabacher. What is the figure we are looking at now?
Mr. Johnson. This is allocation of funds for reconstruction
from 2002 to 2010, and basically the numbers are roughly about
$22 billion in non-DoD funds.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Right. Okay.
Mr. Johnson. But that is allotments, with money that is in
the pipeline yet to be disbursed.
Mr. Rohrabacher. I am getting a lot of figures here, and--
--
Mr. Johnson. Yeah, well, we will actually go back and give
you precise figures. Again, this is 2002 to 2010.
Mr. Rohrabacher. I would just like to know the number
between when the Taliban were driven out and now, and how much
we pumped into the nonmilitary effort in Afghanistan. When I
ask about the GAO to give me any data that they had on how much
of those billions of dollars that we spent ended up in the
pockets of the Karzai family, we were told that is impossible
to do. It is impossible to know how much the Karzai family
profited from those tens of billions of dollars that we have
spent there to help build up their economy and the well-being
of their people.
How basically--I mean, we don't know where the money has
gone then?
Mr. Hutton. Mr. Chairman, you outlined some of the
challenges that we saw and there is additional challenges in
terms of how you determine how much money went where.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Uh-huh.
Mr. Hutton. You hit some of the key ones about the
difficulties and just knowing, once you make an award to a
prime, then how the money flows down, and it could be several
tiers and things like that. One of the bigger challenges,
though, is just trying to identify who is the firm's owner, or
who is benefiting from a firm's award. And that is difficult
because, first of all, even in the United States, it is very
difficult to be able to determine who is actually benefiting
from an award. Not all companies have their information public.
But in the Afghan context, it is important to note that SIGAR
had done some work that showed that all firms that are
operating in Afghanistan have to be licensed by the Afghan
Government. Now, while there is data on the Afghan Government
side, SIGAR had tried to do some work, and they saw challenges
in even determining whether that data are reliable. They also
identified issues that once an award was made, ownerships may
change over time, and being able to consistently track that
over time is very challenging.
Mr. Rohrabacher. In a younger life, you know, when I was--I
was probably--I was a totally different person when I was 19;
but when I was 19, I found myself in the central highlands of
Vietnam, and I was not in the military, but we were doing some
special projects there.
And then I was supposed to go down to a town on the coast
and meet up with some doctors to tell me about corruption. And
I will never forget that, because the doctors at the end of
this--I am 19 years old, and he has got these doctors who are
crying, I mean literally, men who are crying that we are going
to lose this war because of the corruption level in Vietnam.
And they took me out to show me the hospitals that had been set
up to win the hearts and minds of the Afghan--of the Vietnamese
people, and they had been looted, and they had been looted by
our Vietnamese allies and perhaps even some American people who
were there supposedly to help.
I will never forget that because at the same time these
guys--there was a lot of people who were--these guys were
aiding and treating the men who were coming right out of the
combat zone, and here they were, understanding that all of this
blood, and this horrible price that was being paid by
Americans, but yet we have so much corruption, they did not see
how the Vietnamese people could respect us. Because if they
could see it, the Vietnamese people could see it, and why
couldn't our Government see it?
And you know what? I don't think we ever did crack down on
that. And I think that was one of the factors that put us in a
situation that when we left, we left in disgrace in Vietnam. I
would hope that that is not what we do in Afghanistan, but it
appears that we have had this same type of attitude.
And, you know what I am hearing right now is that we really
haven't had an accounting system to make sure that what we are
putting into this country to help improve the lives of the
people, whether or not that money has been looted to a great
degree or not. Am I mistaken here from what I am hearing from
you? I mean, it sounds like there hasn't been a real attempt at
serious accounting at this.
Mr. Hutton. Mr. Chairman, it is interesting that when you
think about what normally is expected to be put in place, first
of all, you have things like the Federal Acquisition
Regulations. That is a pretty sound framework. It has a lot of
different things in there that contracting officers can use to
protect the taxpayer's interest when they are awarding a
contract, for example. But what our work has shown over time is
that, whether you are talking about in that environment DoD's
contracting, State, or USAID, they all face similar challenges.
And the challenges really center on three pieces: The need for
clearly defined requirements of what you are trying to
accomplish. If you can't clearly define those requirements, you
are starting off on a very bad foot.
Second, you have to have the sound business arrangements
that is going to increase, you know; that if you have sound
business arrangements you are going to help, again, better
protect the taxpayer. What that means is using the right
contracting vehicles; writing them in such a way with the
certain clauses that are already in the Federal Acquisition
Regs. They are going to help protect the taxpayer's interests.
But most importantly, sir, is the lack of trained personnel in
both numbers and experience to oversee and monitor the
performance. That is key.
So when you think about it from the start, there is already
processes that allow you to set the footing correctly. But our
work has shown, whether again, we are talking about any of the
main agencies in those environments, a lot of these problems we
are seeing are emblematic across all of their----
Mr. Rohrabacher. Well, let me give you an example. It was
reported in the London Telegraph yesterday, that the Taliban
insurgents who were responsible for IED attacks that killed
several American paratroopers, that these Taliban insurgents
were actually released from jail by officials in the--is it
Konzi Province--and that they would release these Taliban after
bribes were paid to these provincial officials. When that
happens, okay, let's say we have that happening. Do we cut off
aid to those people? Do those people still receive aid who have
then--who have released people who have been murdering our
troops?
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Mr. Hutton. Sir, that is a very difficult question for me
to respond to. That is really policy. What we try to focus on
are the institutions, the agencies that are spending hard-
earned taxpayer funds, whether it is in environments we are
talking about, here that they are best equipped to understand
what they are trying to accomplish, understand the risks
involved, ensuring they have a proper framework in place, and
then executing. Execution is often the issue.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Yeah.
Mr. Hutton. We are not executing these contracts and grants
as well as we could. And that presents the risks overall.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Well, there is a lot of--so are you
telling us that you are satisfied that the money that we are
providing in aid to uplift the Afghan people, that it is
actually getting down to them, and not being pilfered away?
Mr. Hutton. Sir, what I am saying is that when you look at
the whole body of work, I mentioned at the outset we have done
over 100 reports and testimonies across, again, the main three
agencies. But what you see in many cases are similar problems
where we are executing these awards and we don't know if we are
getting the good outcomes that we set out to do, because we
don't have the good monitoring and oversight.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Well, the answer is yes. You are not
certain then. You don't feel confident that the money is coming
down to it. And let me just suggest, the American people are
war-weary. They are war-weary of Afghanistan. We ended up
spending all of these years in Iraq, and now we have a
government in Iraq that seems to be anti-American, and more
pro-Mullah than pro-American, and certainly they are ungrateful
for all of the blood and treasure, trillion dollars that we
spent in Iraq.
I happen to know the Afghan people, and I know that there
is among a large segment of Afghan people, a great deal of not
only respect, but a gratitude and a love in their hearts for
the American people. I have been there with them. I have been
in their villages and fought with them. And what we have here
is not shame on the Afghan people. I think--I feel, I
personally resent that the Iraqi people do not--are not
grateful to us for relieving them of the oppression of Saddam
Hussein. But I don't think that--I am not disappointed in the
Afghan people at all. I think that basically if we have a
system that still functions and permits people such leeway as
we have just been mentioning, shame on us, not shame on them.
And Mr. Carnahan, you may proceed.
Mr. Carnahan. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to start with
a question about the agricultural development teams that have
been deployed across Afghanistan. Our Missouri National Guard
have been one of those entities that have been deployed. They
have been in the Nangarhar Province, and we have heard some
good success stories about what they have been able to do on
the ground. And I wanted to ask specifically about how we can
sustain and build upon the success of stories that we have
heard about those agricultural development teams and your
assessment of their work.
Mr. Johnson. We did some work recently, the last 2 years,
on the agricultural sector in Afghanistan as part of our
counternarcotics focus. And I would concur with your point that
there has been a renewed focus on the ag sector in particular.
Former SRAP Holbrooke placed that emphasis on more building up
the agricultural sector in Afghanistan. And as part of that it
was to elevate the civilian presence, the expertise of USDA and
others as a part of the PRT teams that were going out. Prior to
that we didn't have the right type of resources or that whole
confidence of approach to deal with the ag sector.
And so I would say that report in July 2010 does talk about
that and notes the fact that the U.S. has made some progress in
the alternative development sector of building the ag and the
water irrigation sector as well. And more recently, some work
we did this February 2012, we looked at the civilian surge, the
civilian presence in Afghanistan. And a part of those findings
also talked about how the civilian part will be parallel to the
military leadership to make certain that things like
agriculture were going to be a priority and that you have the
experts there on the ground in the different districts and
provinces carrying out those functions.
Mr. Carnahan. Thank you. The other area that I wanted to
get into was Afghan National Police training. There is
certainly wide agreement and recognition that the fundamental
element of the future stability of Afghanistan, your report
certainly addresses the critical nature of that. We have had
increased funding toward those efforts, yet the Department of
Defense has not assessed the effectiveness of civil policing
activities, and State has yet to conduct an evaluation of its
program in Iraq.
Can you talk about that lack of evaluation and even being
able to measure how effective that is, and to get beyond just
the quantity of the police that we are training to the quality
of that training?
Mr. Johnson. Well, one of the issues I can tackle in an
open setting is the Iraq piece on evaluation. That is part of
our censored but unclassified product. But on the civilian
police issue in Afghanistan, in particular we do note, you
know, DoD has done those assessments. They have contracted out
in that area. In terms of doing more in terms of civil order
policing, they have committed in their recent reports to the
Congress that they would focus more attention on civil-order
policing as opposed to sort of the paramilitary-type police
training and the capability of these police to take on
paramilitary type things. I think DoD is shifting some of that
focus toward more civil-order policing in terms of assessments
in that area.
So you are correct that there were some deficiencies in
that area, but DoD has noted those deficiencies and has agreed
to take steps to correct them.
Mr. Carnahan. And was that entirely being done by
contractors?
Mr. Johnson. It is a combination of using contractors such
as DynCorp, and the U.S. military, along with our international
partners, and doing those sort of things. Right now it is a
concerted effort involving the contractors and folks who may be
embedded with the police in the communities.
Mr. Carnahan. So what is your assessment of--has there been
adequate assessment now or is that yet to be done?
Mr. Johnson. We are hoping that is going to be forthcoming
in the next Department of Defense report that is required to be
provided to the Congress. There is an annual report that they
do. I think it is called a Section 1230 report that they are
required to provide to the Congress, and we are anticipating
that the forthcoming report should include that information.
That was basically their response back to the issue that we
raised in our recently issued Global Foreign Police Training
Report.
Mr. Carnahan. And what is the date of that report?
Mr. Johnson. The Global Foreign Police Training Report was
issued about a month ago, I believe. I think it was, if I am
not mistaken, sometime in March. And we can make sure you get a
copy. We will send a copy up.
Mr. Carnahan. And the next report you referenced is due
when?
Mr. Johnson. The next report for DoD should be sometime
in--I think they just issued one in June. Should be the end of
the year, December, around the December time frame; December,
January.
Mr. Carnahan. And do we expect them to just do it the way
we wanted it done in the first place, or are they changing the
metrics and the way they are doing it?
Mr. Johnson. Well, I think given the plans that the U.S.,
and DoD in particular, has to draw down combat troops, they
have over the past year recognized the need to pay more
attention to ensuring that the Afghan National Police focus on
civil order, rule-of-law type issues, and I think there is some
recognition, given some criticism from some past work that the
IGs have noted, as well as the Congress itself, that more
attention needs to be done in that area. And I think now that
it is more a NATO-led training mission; that that has begun to
be the case, that they all want to focus on civil-order police
because of the planned withdrawal of the combat troops by the
international community.
Mr. Carnahan. Also related to the police ensuring that
there is an adequate number of female members in the Afghan
National Police, can you talk about that? My understanding is
there is about 9 percent within the police, with the goal of
5,000 by 2014. How are we doing on achieving that goal, and
what are we doing to achieve that goal?
Mr. Johnson. Unfortunately, Congressman, we don't have any
updated information or statistics on female police in the
Afghan security force. We would be happy to undertake that
work, though, or to get back to you on those numbers. We can
check with some of the information we can get from the State
Department and the Department of Defense and get back to you on
that.
Mr. Carnahan. Thank you. I would like to see that.
Mr. Johnson. Okay.
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Mr. Carnahan. And then finally, we have worked with Stuart
Bowen and others in developing legislation that would look at
consolidating civilian stabilization management functions into
a U.S. Office for Contingency Operations, and, not
surprisingly, we have not had a lot of great feedback from the
State Department or Defense Department. But I would like to see
if you would comment on that concept of having joint
contingency operations like that, or other recommended changes
in how we can do this better and get beyond some of the
traditional tension between DoD and State and USAID, and be
more effective, in particular, in terms of accountability
measures.
Mr. Johnson. Well, there are two parts to that. One is the
whole contingency operation. With regard to that function
itself we have seen some of the earlier draft proposed
language. We raised some caution or concern in showing that
some of the functions that are being considered to be rolled
in, that they are brought into the contingency operations.
For example, INL functions are broader than just
contingency operations. They are doing counternarcotics work
and law enforcement training across the globe. Some of that
will have to be taken into consideration. That was one of the
issues I think we may have provided some feedback on.
In addition, when you talk about oversight and
accountability, I guess our position there is that obviously
the GAO, as part of your investigative arm, stands ready to
meet any of your needs in the contingency operation
environment, whether that is Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan,
Yemen, and we have been doing significant work in all of those
areas and stand ready to continue to do that work for the
Congress.
Mr. Carnahan. Thank you very much. I yield back, Mr.
Chairman.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Thank you very much. We will have a second
round at this point, and I would like to ask a little bit, some
details here about, for example, the bank scandal. Okay, there
is your specific. Apparently this bank, the Kabul Bank went
broke, or bankrupt, and $825 million were lost in this bank.
Now, at the same time, we have this--and I know you pronounce
it Deloitte, is that it, DeLoitte, the accounting firm, this
major accounting firm that we have got was actually there,
American accounting firm, was involved in that operation to try
to keep--try to keep it so it wouldn't go broke.
And I understand that also the United States Government
used this bank to deposit many of its accounts, and they used
it as a vehicle for aid, et cetera. How is it that when we have
such a prestigious accounting firm on the premises, and we have
American Government officials directly involved with running
accounts through the bank, that the bank can just go belly-up
like this and there is $825 million evaporated?
Mr. Hutton. Mr. Chairman, we have not looked at that, but I
do know that USAID within the last year or so, did some work
looking at the contractors that were supporting technical
advisors for that particular bank.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Well, we did have technical advisors. We
must have had technical advisors in that bank.
Mr. Hutton. Yes, contractors were performing as advisors, I
believe
Mr. Rohrabacher. So how is it that that bank, we have
American technical advisors on the scene, how can we just blink
our eyes and all of a sudden there is $825 million evaporated?
Mr. Hutton. Well, we have not looked at that specifically,
but I could take that back to just the internal controls again,
sir, and having the institutions and the oversight framework
for being able to assure that procedures are followed, whether
it be the banking sector or any other sector.
Mr. Johnson. And Mr. Chairman, if I can sort of chime in on
what John just was alluding to, part of the issue is that the
U.S. and the international community made a commitment to move
more toward direct assistance, provide more money on budget. At
the same time, we were trying to build the Afghan Government's
institutional capacity, whether it is the banking institutions,
financial institutions, whether it is the Ministry of Interior,
Defense----
Mr. Rohrabacher. Right, sure.
Mr. Johnson. All of those things. So these things were
happening at the same time, which in an environment where we
have noted security is a challenge, corruption is a challenge
in this country, as we know, and as well as, more importantly,
the lack of institutional capacity did not exist, so the U.S.
and the rest of the community have been trying to build that
while we are also trying to pump billions of dollars into the
governments directly.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Has there been an investigation into this
bank, and so we know where that money went? There are reports,
of course, that President Karzai's brother, who was heavily
involved in this bank, has been able to purchase property in
Dubai, for example. Has anyone looked into that charge?
Mr. Johnson. As John noted, we have not looked specifically
at the----
Mr. Rohrabacher. Who would look into it? If it was going to
be looked into, who would look into it?
Mr. Hutton. Sir, I think typically, for GAO, if we are
doing any job and we see some things that look like it might be
potentially fraud, waste--or fraud in particular.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Right.
Mr. Hutton. We would then turn that over to the IG that is
responsible for that program to take the next look because that
is more their core specialty.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Has it been turned over to them?
Mr. Hutton. Sir, I have not looked at it, I cannot tell
you, but I don't know whether any of the other witnesses from
the executive branch might be able to give you some more
insights into that, but I don't have information on that, sir.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Do you have any information on that as to
whether or not----
Mr. Johnson. No, sir.
Mr. Rohrabacher. So the IG is supposed to investigate?
Mr. Hutton. Typically that is the process that we use.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Okay, typically, and in Afghanistan, that
is what we are doing. If something comes up like this, we ask
the IG to investigate, but we have an $825 million loss, but
you are unaware of whether or not there has been a request for
an investigation?
Mr. Johnson. Well, I would note this was an issue that came
up probably 1\1/2\ years, 2 years ago, and there was a hearing
before the Approps Committee, and this was mentioned during
that hearing with the IG present as well as SIGAR present, and
my understanding is that there were some investigations that
were going to be undertaken but not by the GAO.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Okay.
Mr. Hutton. The only other thing I would add, sir, is
investigations may not only involve that one particular
inspector general that I mentioned, there may be other tools
such as Federal Government investigators and other support, but
I don't know anything in terms of the specific details about
the case you raise.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Let me ask you this: Do you have a
blacklist of Afghan officials and presidential family members
who you will not do business with because there is evidence
that they have been involved with high level corruption?
Mr. Hutton. No, sir.
Mr. Rohrabacher. There is no blacklist, there is no list
of----
Mr. Johnson. No list that the GAO has.
Mr. Hutton. Right.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Hmmm. And so, for all we know, a large
number of people who you are dealing with are people who have
engaged in blatant corruption?
Mr. Hutton. Well, one thing, sir, when you talk about
lists, we mentioned in our formal statement as well as in our
past work, we identified that there are vetting processes that
the DoD and USAID in particular have used. To the extent to
which they are vetting contractors or grantees before they make
the award and they find that they have some issue, regardless
of what the issue is, that is information that they would have
in their own organization. One of the issues we came up with in
our report was making sure that the interagency shares
information so that all that information can be leveraged if
that particular contractor or grantee wants to participate in
another Federal agency's programs.
Mr. Johnson. If I can add on, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Yes, go right ahead.
Mr. Johnson. With respect, again, getting back to the
direct assistance issue and the decision made to move more
toward direct assistance by the international community and our
own Government to provide more than 50 percent there, there was
a push and has been a push to, you know, provide funding
directly to the Afghan or the Pakistani Governments or their
firms, local firms for that matter. And as a part of that, as
we noted and as John noted in his statement, the key to that
being successful is to make sure we do pre-award risk
assessments to determine where the vulnerabilities, the
weaknesses are. And there are situations from that standpoint--
--
Mr. Rohrabacher. That means you would have to have a list,
and you apparently don't have a list.
Mr. Johnson. Even if they have a list and the list tells
you that this organization or institution is corrupt, and we
have some situations where in Pakistan, the institution may
have been corrupt, they would still decide to go the direct
assistance route, but they would take mitigating things to put
in place, such as embedding someone in there to ensure that
there is no mismanagement of funds or to require certain
additional controls. Those are things that can be done to help
safeguard and prevent waste, fraud, and abuse of some of the
U.S. funds.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Tell me, have you studied the
reconstruction that was done in Japan after World War II? You
haven't?
Mr. Johnson. No, sir.
Mr. Rohrabacher. What countries have you studied
reconstruction programs on that were successful?
Mr. Hutton. That were successful? In my professional work
at GAO, I focused on Iraq and Afghanistan. That is my----
Mr. Rohrabacher. So you have never focused on a successful
program of restoration. I doubt whether the Americans after
World War II permitted Japanese companies who were involved in
corruption to continue to get contracts with the economy-
building measures that we were taking then. I doubt that. I
don't know for sure.
But let me just say that I can understand why the American
people would be horrified if they found out how loose we have
been with their money, and the fact is that this corruption in
Afghanistan, if the United States isn't willing to take it so
seriously that we blacklist anybody who has been engaged in it,
much less put them in jail, if we don't do that, no wonder they
don't take it seriously, because we are not taking it seriously
then. And I think that, after all of these years, it is
disheartening to hear this late in the game how loose this
whole situation is.
I want to thank you, and I am not--I am not blaming you
guys. This whole thing--anyway, it looks, after all of these
years to hear this, I am very disappointed, but thank you very
much. We will have the next panel, please.
Mr. Hutton. Thank you.
Mr. Johnson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Rohrabacher. All right, thank you very much, and we
will now proceed with our second panel, which is composed of
Larry Sampler, Jr., a senior deputy assistant to the
administrator, Office of Afghanistan and Pakistan Affairs of
the United States Agency for International Development. Now
that was a mouthful.
He also served as a deputy coordinator for reconstruction
stabilization with a joint appointment at both the State
Department and USAID. He was a research staff member for the
Institute of Defense Analysis with a focus on West Bank and
Gaza, which is another garden spot that you were involved in.
During 2002 and 2005, he served as chief of staff for the
United Nations Assistance Missions in Afghanistan.
Prior to that assignment, he was a consultant to the Afghan
Government in support of the Afghan constitutional Loya Jirga,
after which he was awarded a constitutional medal by President
Karzai.
Mr. Sampler did his undergraduate work in physics and
electrical engineering at Georgia Tech, has a master's degree
in diplomacy from Norwich University, and is an Army veteran
who served with the Special Forces.
You are on the hot seat now, but we appreciate you being
here, and we appreciate a very serious and frank dialogue with
you today, but you may proceed with your opening statement, and
then we will go from there.
STATEMENT OF MR. LARRY SAMPLER, JR., SENIOR DEPUTY ASSISTANT TO
THE ADMINISTRATOR, OFFICE OF AFGHANISTAN AND PAKISTAN AFFAIRS,
U.S. AGENCY FOR INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT
Mr. Sampler. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I will be brief and leave as much time as possible for
questions. I thank you for the opportunity to testify. I do
represent the Office of Afghanistan and Pakistan Affairs at
USAID.
And I would like to begin the way I always do, which is by
thanking the veterans, be they military, State Department,
USAID or even contractors, who have served in the past decade
in Afghanistan.
As you rightly noted, since the time you were there and the
time I was there, there has been a tremendous amount of
sacrifice, and I would like to recognize that both on the part
of the international community but also the Afghans, from Abdul
Haq and Ahmad Shah Masood, to the thousands of Afghans now who
put their lives at risk every day working to make Afghanistan a
better place.
So while it is my responsibility, and I take it quite
seriously, to address as many of the concerns as have been
raised as possible, I also hope that in my remarks, I can give
a few opportunities for people to take pride in what has been
accomplished and have some sense of optimism about the way
ahead and things to come.
As you noted, I have worked in Afghanistan since 2002, off
and on, much of that time physically in Afghanistan, and so I
know firsthand a lot of the challenges that implementers face,
and I am happy to share during the question and answers as that
is appropriate.
Before I talk directly and specifically about oversight, I
would like to address a few of the successes that the Afghans
have achieved with the support of the U.S. taxpayers, USAID,
the interagency and the international community. And I have to
note, one of the best unintended consequences of my travel to
the region is that I get out of the constant news cycles of
Washington, and I get to see firsthand when things are working
and when there are successes and how much progress there has
been since 2002.
For example, under the Taliban there were less than 900,000
people in school. Very few of them, if any, were girls.
Currently more than 8 million children are enrolled in school,
more than a third of those are girls, and now after a decade of
improving schools and improving access to education, we are
finding a generation of young men and women graduating from
these schools who have much better critical thinking skills.
This will make them better citizens, and it will make them much
more resilient in their opposition to thoughtless or malicious
doctrines.
In 2002, only 9 percent of Afghans had access to basic
health care. Today that access is over 60 percent of the
population, and by basic health care, we mean medical
assistance within an hour's walk of where they are. Life
expectancy at birth now is 20 years higher than it was in 2002,
and maternal and infant mortality rates have dropped
significantly, drawing international attention to what the
Afghans have done right in that regard.
Our work in the energy sector has tripled the number of
Afghans with access to reliable electricity, not just
supporting but actually enabling economic growth in the
country. With USAID's support, Afghanistan's national power
company has increased their revenue collection by 50 percent
every year since 2009. This has reduced the need for a subsidy
for this state-owned enterprise from $170 million a year to
around $30 million a year last year.
And as a segue, USAID is focusing our efforts on areas with
the greatest potential for increasing domestic revenue and
sustainable growth and away from areas that require foreign
assistance. These are areas such as agriculture, extractive
industries, energy, trade, and generic capacity building for
their government. We are, in fact, reducing new infrastructure
projects to focus instead on building the Afghan capacity to
maintain the infrastructure that they have.
We are cementing gains that we have made by women, gains
made in the areas of health and education, and we are
increasingly focusing on how to involve the private sector both
in Afghanistan, among the Afghan diaspora, and among the
international business community in our programs. We are
focusing, in other words, on sustainable development.
The successes that I have talked about have been achieved
by constantly improving how we do business in Afghanistan.
Protecting taxpayer resources is a key concern of USAID. Over
the past 2 years, we have taken several measures to better
track our funding, to enhance accountability, and to ensure our
programs do have the desired impact in the communities we seek
to impact.
We have developed the Accountable Assistance for
Afghanistan initiative that the GAO colleagues referred to. It
is actually an extra layer of oversight, recognizing that
Afghanistan is a high-risk environment in a war zone. It
involves better award mechanisms that are more carefully
crafted to keep our partners more carefully constrained. It
involves intensive partner vetting for all non-U.S. partners.
It involves stronger financial controls, how we actually parse
out the resources and the money. And it involves a closer, more
professional oversight of the projects in the field.
Ultimately, our goal is that Afghanistan can monitor and
manage programs themselves. To that end, we are engaging in
financial management training with our Afghan partners at all
levels, both inside and outside of government. We are also
supporting efforts to promote a professional Afghan civil
service, and in the long term, this will improve accountability
and reduce the opportunities for corruption.
So, as part of our goal of Afghan management of their own
development, we are working to concentrate more assistance
directly to the Afghan Government while at the same time
tailoring oversight to make sure that we have a high degree of
accountability.
We do not work with the Government of Afghanistan as a
whole. Instead, we work with specific Ministries, and we only
engage after careful assessments have determined that the
Ministry has the technical, financial, and administrative
systems necessary to responsibly manage our resources. Our
primary method in these cases is a disbursement of funds on a
reimbursable basis for costs incurred. In other words, the
Ministry does the work; we validate that the work has been
done; and then we provide the funds.
Finally, as you know, there are multiple independent
oversight bodies that review our work, including the GAO, but
also SIGAR and the USAID inspector general. These organizations
have done about 70 audits of our work since October 2010, and
some of these audits I would note were initiated at our
request; USAID asked for them. In fact, the A3, or the
Accountable Assistance for Afghanistan initiative, was
specifically in response to an audit that we had requested. We
really welcome their oversight, we have a good working
relationship with all of the oversight bodies, and we do
welcome their insight.
Finally, in conclusion, we recognize the sacrifices in
blood and treasure made by Americans and Afghans alike. We are
under no illusions about the challenges we face, but we think
these challenges call for exercising more care and diligence in
how we operate rather than walking away from the vital national
security interests that this work supports. Our mission of
defeating al Qaeda and denying it a safe haven or a place to
rebuild is still critical, and USAID programs are an important
contribution toward that goal because we are helping to build a
stable, sustainable, and secure Afghanistan that will not
require huge amounts of foreign assistance.
Mr. Chairman, I am happy to take your questions or to
address some of the issues raised by GAO at your convenience.
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Mr. Rohrabacher. Thank you very much.
And I won't say that that was a contradictory set of images
being presented, but it was not necessarily totally consistent,
either, between the first and the second panel, but not
necessarily contradictory.
Let me just get into some details with you here. I
appreciate how difficult your job is, and let me just note
that, and I am very pleased that someone of your caliber has
taken on such a heavy responsibility and such a difficult task.
Mr. Sampler. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Rohrabacher. And I understand that. So could we take a
look at, first of all, how much money--let me ask you the
question, 2002 to the present, 10 years, how much money have we
spent in American aid to Afghanistan, not military aid?
Mr. Sampler. I had the advantage of having my staff look
this up after you asked the GAO.
Mr. Rohrabacher. I was hoping you were going to do that.
Mr. Sampler. $15.7 billion is what USAID has had
appropriated for our use in Afghanistan since 2002.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Say that again now.
Mr. Sampler. $15.7 billion. For clarity, that does not
represent all civilian assistance. I am not cognizant on what
USAID or other agencies may have had, but it would not approach
anything like the amount that USAID has been given.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Okay. And when you have money that is
coming in, you are saying that you actually have tried to give
this directly to people within the Afghan Government who you
have determined have specific responsibilities for trying to
achieve these specific goals. Has the money been, has our then
tax dollars or the Treasury money that is coming into this,
would that have gone through the Kabul Bank?
Mr. Sampler. No, Mr. Chairman. With respect to the Kabul
Bank concerns, no U.S. dollars were associated with Kabul Bank
at all. We didn't even use the electronic fund transfer
mechanism of that particular bank. It was not a policy
decision, per se. There are other banks, and we just had not
been doing business with Kabul Bank.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Okay. But we did have one of our great
firms there to make sure that their books were being,
supposedly being kept right, but they were being paid by whom?
Mr. Sampler. I believe you are referring to Deloitte.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Yes.
Mr. Sampler. Who bought out BearingPoint. BearingPoint had
a contract as a part of the Economic Growth and Governance
Initiative.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Where did that contract come from?
Mr. Sampler. That was a USAID program.
Mr. Rohrabacher. A U.S. What program?
Mr. Sampler. I am sorry?
Mr. Rohrabacher. U.S. Aid program?
Mr. Sampler. USAID program.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Okay.
Mr. Sampler. It was about a $95 million program over
several years. This piece of it was about 8 percent of that, so
$7 million roughly that Deloitte was using not at Kabul Bank
but at the Afghan Central Bank. The Afghan Central Bank is the
institution that is charged with preventing things like Kabul
Bank from happening.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Right.
Mr. Sampler. One of the issues, in my opinion, is the
institutions in Afghanistan are not yet mature enough to have
prevented or to prevent adequately the kinds of Afghan-on-
Afghan crime that Kabul Bank represents. The Deloitte program,
the Economic Growth and Governance Initiative, was supposed to
help build the central bank's ability to supervise subordinate
banks or to supervise outlying private banks.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Okay. So you didn't have anything directly
involved with the Kabul Bank, but you did provide a grant to
Deloitte to do its job, which was partially to oversee banks in
Afghanistan, and Kabul Bank happened to be the biggest one?
Mr. Sampler. Not precisely, and I am sorry; I don't mean to
quibble. It was not a grant, it was a contract, and Deloitte
was not responsible for doing any oversight themselves. They
were trainers. They would not have been able to do oversight
because they wouldn't have the language skills, for example, to
review Dari and Pashto and Balochi documents. Their job was to
serve as mentors to the central bank examiners working for the
Government of Afghanistan, and these central bank examiners
would have been the ones who would go out and do the bank
investigations and the bank inquiries at the private banks. So
it was not Deloitte's responsibility. And in fairness to our
own inspector general, USAID asked for an investigation after
the Kabul Bank fiasco, and our inspector general disagreed with
us. We said that Deloitte's responsibilities would not have
given them any particular insight into this Afghan-on-Afghan
crime, and our inspector general thought differently, and they
said in their report, we believe that if Deloitte were doing
what you told them to do, they would have seen precursors to or
indications of fraud, and they should have reported that to the
U.S. Government.
We took that on board, and we actually terminated that
program because despite the fact that they weren't directly
responsible for this, the program lost tremendous credibility
because of the press associated with it, but we have now
issued----
Mr. Rohrabacher. I would suggest that it was more the $825
million that evaporated rather than just the press from----
Mr. Sampler. No, the bank fiasco, there is no question.
Deloitte was caught up in the press associated with that.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Is Deloitte then serving as an NGO, would
that be what you would say or just a contractor?
Mr. Sampler. They were a contractor. In this case, they
were a contractor, and to the best of my knowledge, I don't
think they work as an NGO.
Mr. Rohrabacher. All right. So it was a profit-making
contract?
Mr. Sampler. They were and are, and this was, yes. But we
have since then, based on the IG report, issued guidance to all
of our contractors that if they detect any indication of fraud,
waste or abuse, they have a responsibility to report it, and
that is across the board in our contracts now.
Mr. Rohrabacher. In your testimony, you were talking about
with pride of how you have tried to go directly through the
Afghan Government when possible to achieve the social goals and
the development goals that you have set out for yourself. Now,
in the Afghan Government, there are people who have committed
crimes; they have been shown to have been involved, you know,
there is the fellows who just let go all of these Taliban
prisoners, et cetera, et cetera. Do you have a list, a
blacklist of people that you will not give our money to?
Mr. Sampler. We do, Congressman. With respect to direct
assistance, we don't give money to individuals. We work with
Ministries, and we don't even work with the Ministries until we
have positive--we have done this initial assessment. If there
are shortcomings, we have provided technical assistance to
compensate for those shortcomings. So there is no check written
to an individual in the Bank of Afghanistan.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Sure, of course.
Mr. Sampler. But we do have, and there is----
Mr. Rohrabacher. But if the guy at the Ministry who takes
in the checks and writes the checks for the Ministry happens to
be the same guy who was, you know, fingered for stealing money
from some other organization----
Mr. Sampler. There are a couple of interagency task forces
and some that are international among all the donors, one being
Task Force Shafafiyat, which looks specifically at issues of
Afghan corruption, and we certainly share information among the
interagency. To take your example, though, of a Ministry that
we have done the pre-award assessment, we would have identified
through this task force or through the interagency
collaboration most likely that this individual was of
questionable repute, and there would have been some mitigation
taken to make sure that he did not have access to these funds.
I don't--to the best of my knowledge there is no situation
where one individual in any Ministry we work with has signatory
authority for funds. It doesn't work that way. They do the
work. They say they have done the work and certify it. USAID
direct hire staff or our third-party contractor validate that
the work is done, and then we reimburse the receipts for that
work. These are lessons we have learned the hard way, not just
in Afghanistan but in other places that USAID works. This is
not the first corrupt place that we have had to work.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Yes. Yes, I understand that. I want to ask
you a little bit about NGOs and then back to the point you were
just making.
So there was a senior auditor for SIGAR, James Peterson,
wrote a column for Politico yesterday suggesting that NGOs were
taking far too much money off the top of various programs that
have been given money to do this or that, but they end up
having enormous overhead costs. And he suggested in this
article, that USAID has struggled to keep NGO overhead costs
below 70 percent. So is that right? I mean, we are actually
just looking at the NGOs going in, and they are only providing
the money that is given to them, only 30 percent is ending up
trying to achieve the goal?
Mr. Sampler. Well, I can reassure Mr. Peterson, we are
successful at keeping overhead below 70 percent. I don't know
where he got that number. I can't speak for all NGOs, I know
the NGO that I worked for and I know the ones that I have
worked with in my 10 years, none of them have overhead that
approaches even 30 percent, to be honest, but certainly not 70
percent. I did see Mr. Peterson's article back I think when it
came back out in January or February and found it to be not
particularly credible, to be honest.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Okay. So the--that is okay. So you would
suggest that using NGOs is an alternative or one of the
alternatives that would be a very viable alternative for USAID
to look at and to continue down that road in terms of your
development strategies, is that correct, in Afghanistan?
Mr. Sampler. Yes, NGOs, we have direct assistance, we have
contracts with for-profit companies for the most part, and we
have cooperative agreements and grants.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Do you want to give me a little assessment
on whether the NGO approach or giving direct money to specific
government agencies in meeting the Afghan Government's
agencies, which is the most effective in building the new
clinics and schools that you talked about?
Mr. Sampler. Certainly. This is part of I think what makes
my job so interesting, to be honest, Congressman, is there are
things that NGOs are better able to do, and they are valuable
partners all over the world, and they have both international
NGOs and domestic Afghan NGOs, but I constantly remind myself
and our staff that our job is to work the international
community out of a job, out of business.
Using international NGOs is somewhat effective at that, but
it is more effective if we can find Afghan partners in whom we
can build that capacity from the ground up.
Mr. Rohrabacher. And you have used these Afghan partners
and been satisfied at the level of competency and also the
level of corruption or lack of corruption that you have found?
Mr. Sampler. If we are not satisfied, we don't use them,
Congressman. Competency we can train; corruption we can't
tolerate. So if we meet with an organization that needs
capacity to be able to do whatever we have asked them to do--
the Ministry of Public Health is a great example. The Ministry
itself needed some work. We created a technical assistance
mechanism to help the Ministry do this, and then the Ministry
went themselves to NGOs, and the Ministry and USAID helped
build the NGO capacity to execute the programs. We could have
done it with an international NGO, but that would not have had
the same capacity building value of doing it through the
Afghans.
Mr. Rohrabacher. I would just note that my personal
observation over the years has been that when NGOs come in, a
lot of them have to have drivers. They have to have very secure
locations, and sometimes luxurious for the country they are in,
a luxurious location to nest, and it seems to me that there is
a lot of--NGOs going out and roughing it has not necessarily
been what I witnessed. Although I am sure there are many NGOs
that do that, there is a lot of NGOs that aren't.
Mr. Sampler. Thank you, Congressman. NGOs range everything
from small faith-based NGOs that are supported by one
congregation in north Georgia all the way up to some very large
multinational NGOs.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Right. Do you believe that Karzai's
brother profited from the bank failure from the Kabul Bank
scandal?
Mr. Sampler. Congressman, all I know about Karzai's brother
and the bank is what I have read in the press. The most recent
story I read was that he had reached an accommodation with the
prosecutor where he would not face jail time as long as he made
restitution, and that is what the press is reporting. Other
than that, I don't know.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Okay. Have you heard stories about any
other member of the Karzai family that seemed credible to you
that they might have been involved in drugs in some way?
Mr. Sampler. You have to stop at the credible to me part.
Congressman, I know you know from your own time in country that
it is a country that has an oral tradition as opposed to a
written tradition, and there are stories about everything and
everyone in Afghanistan, so certainly those stories were
rampant.
To be clear, though, at no time during my DoD experience
there, with ISAF, with the State Department or with USAID have
I ever seen a credible story that is documented that we could
take action on, and I am confident knowing that people that I
worked with----
Mr. Rohrabacher. That little caveat ``that we could take
action on'' leaves a big door open. Let me ask you this: Do you
know of the Karzai family owning property in Dubai?
Mr. Sampler. I do not. And I wouldn't know. I go through
Dubai on the way, but that is all.
Mr. Rohrabacher. But you are at the same time providing
grants, are you not, to the various government officials and
agencies in the Afghan Government that would be responsible for
trying to ferret out that type of corruption?
Mr. Sampler. The most relevant organization that I can
think of that we support is the Office of High Oversight, which
is their equivalent perhaps of an inspector general at the
national level. So, yes, we do support the Government of
Afghanistan's attempt to police its own.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Right. And you haven't heard of anything
coming from--about the Karzai family being on their blacklist?
Mr. Sampler. No.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Or is it just something everybody knows,
or is it just something that perhaps is probably not true?
Mr. Sampler. I don't know exactly how to answer that,
Congressman.
USAID's business is with the Government of Afghanistan. I
am very comfortable discussing corruption and allegations about
the Government of Afghanistan and about specific Ministries.
With respect to particular families, be it Karzai's or Habib
Yaqubi's, I could go back, if you wish, and find out what we
have on our books, but I don't know those answers off the top
of my head.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Well, he did give you a medal and
everything.
Mr. Sampler. He did, and I am quite proud of it.
Mr. Rohrabacher. I would be proud of a medal from
Afghanistan, and he was representing Afghanistan at the time. I
think you can be very proud of that medal.
Mr. Sampler. He was.
Mr. Rohrabacher. And we are very grateful for the service
that you are providing.
Mr. Sampler. Thank you, Congressman.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Part of that service is having to come up
and be cross-examined by Members of Congress, which makes it
even a little bit more of a drudgery or a tough job.
Let me ask about this new agreement that we have signed
with the Afghan Government. It is my understanding--well, first
of all, it has tied us into a relationship with an Afghan
Government that I personally would question whether we should
be tied into or not, but does this agreement, from your
understanding, tie us into a relationship with the Afghan
Government where 50 percent of our, of all of our assistance
will have to go through the Afghan Government in what you were
saying rather than being given to contractors and NGOs?
Mr. Sampler. The agreement does call for a 50 percent on-
budget contribution. We will not do that until we can assure
ourselves that that contribution will be properly managed. So
that is what--it is set for us as a goal, just as we have set
goals for the Government of Afghanistan.
Mr. Rohrabacher. So we have agreed to try to achieve that
goal?
Mr. Sampler. That is correct, Congressman.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Okay. But we haven't agreed to do it, we
have just agreed we are going to try to do it?
Mr. Sampler. Absolutely.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Okay. That is a very interesting
interpretation of the agreement. I will take a look and make
sure the wording is sort of that way. I will have to suggest
that we have been in Afghanistan now for close to 10 years, and
you are right when you talked about Commander Masood and Abdul
Haq and some of the great leaders that they had. This is--they
have lost 1 million people in the last 20 years, many of them
who would be providing the leadership, the honest and committed
leadership that Afghanistan or any society needs.
Unfortunately, they are gone, and we have got to do our best
without them.
Let me ask a little bit, I have one or two more questions
about aid, and you do not have a specific list of people who
work for the government who you are not now--who are on your
blacklist, who you are not going to deal with?
Mr. Sampler. USAID, other than our suspension and debarment
list, which is a corporate list, does not have a blacklist of
individuals, but before we work with a particular Ministry,
part of the preventive maintenance or the preventive assessment
that we would do, the preparatory assessment would involve who
will be working with this money and who will be the signatory
for this.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Okay. How much of the aid--I have received
information that suggests that a large portion of the aid that
we have spent in Afghanistan in these 10 years has gone to the
southern tier of Afghanistan, which is basically the Pashtun
territories. Is that true? And if it is true, why are we
putting a lion's share of our aid there rather than working
with those people who actually helped us defeat the Taliban,
who come from more of the northern tier of the country?
Mr. Sampler. Congressman, that is not an uncommon question.
The demographic distribution of the funds is somewhat skewed by
the fact that Kabul is itself in the east of Afghanistan, so in
the regions, the east and the south have Kabul and Kandahar.
The south and even the southwest, the Helmand River valley
area, have been identified as particular recipients of
assistance, primarily in support of the military or the
comprehensive approach to countering the insurgency there.
In meetings with the governor of Bamiyan, which you may
know is a beautiful part of Afghanistan and has not seen much
of the war lately, they lamented the fact that they are
peaceful. They are law abiding. They have a woman governor,
they have a minister, an admirable administration, but they
don't get the level of resources that they think they should
get.
We are working--I mean, we constantly realign our
portfolio. We did a portfolio review just in the past 6 months,
and part of that realignment is focusing on where do the
resources need to go. We avoid political distributions. These
are not--the resources are determined primarily by the needs of
the U.S. Government and then by the priorities of the
Government of Afghanistan.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Okay. Your list of things for which we can
be proud of, and let me just suggest that shortly after the
liberation--of course, I went in and out of Afghanistan before
the liberation and back during all the way to the Russian
times, but I remember right after the liberation, I went in,
and I drove between Kabul and Mazar-i-Sharif, and halfway
through, there was a school, a tent that was set up. And I will
have to admit to you one of the most inspiring sights that I
have ever seen were those kids in that school and where you had
little girls and little boys both, and here they had just come
from a society where educating a girl would have meant they
would cut the head off the teacher. And these people were
committed to teaching their children, all of their children,
the basics that would permit them to live a decent life. And
that was very inspiring, and helping schools and health care
can't go wrong in that regard, unless somebody is pilfering all
the money, like I suggested when I was in Vietnam, I noticed
then that money had been pilfered.
Mr. Sampler. Congressman, you lamented the loss of Abdul
Haq and Commander Masood, and I think a lot of people do. But I
am inspired when I go back by the young people who look up to
those men and their peers and who aspire to fill their shoes.
One of the things that excites me about the education programs
in particular, and it was my words, I wrote the part of my
presentation talking specifically about critical thinking
skills. Young Afghan men and young Afghan women are not going
to be led blindly into bad ideas, be they governance ideas or
be they some other maligned doctrine, and these schools I think
are the hope and the future, not just for Afghanistan but for
the region. They will be better citizens, they will be better
business people.
Mr. Rohrabacher. And the schools, are they in the southern
part of the country as well, is this something that you are
focusing on, and how does that--I mean, as we know, the
southern part of the country where the Pashtuns are the
dominant force, much of the Taliban's antifemale aspects of
them comes from or actually the Pashtuns agree with some of
that, a lot of that. Is there a resistance in these Pashtun
areas to that type of education?
Mr. Sampler. It varies community by community. As you
probably recall, they have a very tribal and clan-structured
society, especially in the south, and if the leadership of that
community have had exposure, if one of their nieces or
daughters or a woman in their family has been educated and they
have seen that this contributes to the well-being of the
family, then those patriarchs are able to help push that
message out.
But the other thing that makes this irreversible, I think,
is the number of young women who have been educated and who
will not be put back into the dark ages, and the radio
programs, there are some 15,000 independent radio stations now
across the country that are quietly but slowly spreading a
message that education of women is a good thing. So, yes, there
is resistance. In some cases, it has been brutal resistance,
but I think that that is on the wane in general.
Mr. Rohrabacher. You mentioned Kandahar, and that of course
has been a priority area, but it has also been a priority area
that has been dominated by the Karzai family, and what has been
your experience with the Karzai family in Kandahar?
Mr. Sampler. I have no personal experience with the Karzai
family in Kandahar. When I was the chief of staff of the U.N.
mission, I spent a fair amount of time there, and I would be
able to say that the Karzais' tribe was a prominent tribe but
not the only dominant tribe in that part of the country, and
during my time there, that would have been 2004 to 2006, their
clan or their tribe was competing with others for resources and
for dominance, but I was not in Kandahar at a time when
anything like the Karzai family ran the city. I didn't
experience that.
Mr. Rohrabacher. And what else is prevalent in Kandahar, is
there something that grows out in the countryside?
Mr. Sampler. You are probably speaking about opium, and
Helmand is actually quite a bit more----
Mr. Rohrabacher. Yes, I understand, but Kandahar is in that
part of the, that whole swath of the country where opium is----
Mr. Sampler. Across the south, if there are not strong
institutions and if there are not, alternatively, livelihoods
and value chains and access to market, opium will certainly be
grown.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Okay. And I know that you have got a list,
and I hope you will provide for me a list, and I know you have
got it because--and it is good--of enterprises that we are
trying to use as alternatives to the opium trade, and I won't
ask you to detail that for us now, but I am sure that is part
of what you are trying to do?
Mr. Sampler. It is.
Mr. Rohrabacher. If you could send that to me in writing,
that would be deeply appreciated.
Mr. Sampler. We will be happy to do that, Congressman.
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Mr. Rohrabacher. Do you have anything you would like to
add?
Mr. Sampler. Just one thing I would like to address, with
respect to the GAO, and I don't know if they stayed, I speak
sincerely when I say we appreciate the oversight they provide.
I don't take great umbrage when the GAO finds mistakes. I take
and pay particular attention to open recommendations that we
have not closed. So the GAO finding a problem is not great news
for us, but it is not a failure on our part. Not addressing
their recommendation and not closing the recommendation is. And
that is where I think we have such a good relationship, not
just with GAO but also with SIGAR and in particular with the
USAID IGs. We will argue with them vociferously about points of
art and about the state of how we do this, but at the end of
the day, their job is to point out weaknesses, and our job is
to address the weaknesses. So I think hearings like this are
very useful, and I certainly think that the GAO and the two IGs
provide a valuable resource. We had--I asked my staff, we have
had over 248 recommendations from our IG over the course of the
10 years that we have been in Afghanistan, and of those, all
but about 49 of them have been closed, and I know some of the
49 because they cross my desk regularly. The IG said that we
needed to do X, but for reasons why we can't do that yet. So
that would be the only point I would make is that I view this
as not antagonistic and certainly not adversarial but as parts
of a whole and making sure that we are good stewards with
taxpayer resources.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Okay. So you have been in and out of
Afghanistan now for quite a few years, and you know about our
struggle to develop that country. Is the government structure
that we helped put in place, that we actually pressured people
to adopt, is that so centralized that, number one, it
encourages corruption? I mean, we have now a presidential
system in which the President of the central government
appoints all of the provincial governors, and then the
governors then appoint the other officials down under them, so
basically we have set up a system that if it was in the United
States, the President of the United States would be controlling
all the governments all the way down to the local city hall. Do
you think that system lends itself to corruption?
Mr. Sampler. I am smiling, Congressman, that is a great
question, and it is one that actually I think during the
emergency Loya Jirga and the constitutional Jirga, we in the
international community debated almost constantly, but what we
fell back on to in the end was that it was not our decision to
make, we did have and there is no question that the
international community influenced the Afghans in the shape and
the form of their government.
Answering from a developmental academic perspective, I
don't think that a centralized government fosters corruption
more than, say, a decentralized government would. What prevents
corruption is robust institutions, and if the Afghans had the
capacity in the provinces and the districts for robust
institutions, there would be more room for decentralization. It
is my experience, my personal experience, not the Agency's,
that in Afghanistan, that capacity is not there universally
yet. It is growing. And, again, the schools are growing it
fast. As these provincial centers are able to absorb capacity
and to absorb resources, they should.
If you are asking me whether or not having, whether the
Afghan Constitution having the President appoint and the
governors appoint is the best system, the only comparison that
I can make is it took us 12 years to go from the Articles of
Confederation to a Constitution that was the best I think in
the world, and even then our Constitution took 114 years as of
yesterday to give women the right to vote. I think it is
important that we hold the Afghans accountable to a high
standard, but it has to be an achievable standard, and you know
better than I perhaps because you roamed that country with less
security details and less constraints, their culture is
incredibly entrenched. And it is not going to be something that
we can change in a decade, which is one of the reasons I have
been so encouraged to hear discussion about a longer-term
investment, certainly at diminished levels, but the United
States is going to stay the course in Afghanistan so that we
don't make mistakes that we made after the last time we were
working in that part of the world.
Mr. Rohrabacher. The opposition to the current government
from the northern sector of the country is suggesting that they
have--by the way, people have claimed that I believe in some
sort of segmentation of the country and dividing the country,
which I do not, just for the record. And where they get that is
that I believe that we have to have a system that does in some
way address their basic culture, which is decision making needs
to be made at the tribal and village level as much as possible,
but in terms of the--so Mr. Karzai has covered himself by
suggesting that means I believe in cutting the whole country
apart. Also I happen to believe in--that in Afghanistan, it
might be better--or whatever I believe is irrelevant, but the
people may want this, and they should be given the choice of
deciding. A lot of people in the northern part of the country
would rather have a parliamentary system in order to make sure
that you just don't have all the power in one man and if you do
have a President or Prime Minister of the country, that at
least that person has to rely on a coalition instead of
everything from the top down, and--any thoughts on that?
Mr. Sampler. Congressman, I think your recognition of local
decision making is just as relevant today as it was when you
were there. One of the lessons that we have learned in our 10
years there was focusing, for example, on rule of law issues.
Rule of law, to us, means judges, it means prosecutors, defense
attorneys; it means courtrooms. Rule of law to Afghans mean
local shuras, and it means sitting down with the elders of the
two villages that are in dispute and coming to a sensible
conclusion, and then everyone agreeing to it and walking away.
That is a lot less expensive than courts. In Afghanistan, it is
a lot more effective. It is sensitive and recognizes the
leadership that they have in their own communities.
Just an anecdote about illustrating the differences in how
we see the world and how they see the world, after the
emergency Loya Jirga, I sat with elders and was beginning to
presage that there were these elections coming, and one of the
gray beards from one of the communities said, Mr. Larry, I
fought with the Muj, I am the water master in my village, I
have been on the Hajj, I have done all these things. This young
man is my grandson, why should his vote count the same as mine?
And I was a recent graduate from an excellent university in the
United States, and I didn't have an answer to that. What I have
come to realize is that Afghan systems aren't worse than ours
in some cases; they are just different. We need to identify
their strengths and their weaknesses, and we need to make sure
that we protect our equities, be it taxpayer dollars or people,
and then we need to let the Afghans get on with doing business
in ways that are transparent and accountable.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Let's just note that the only time period
that I have been able to discern from their history where they
had decades long of relative stability happened under the
leadership of Zahir Shah, who is one of the beloved figures of
Afghan history, and the reason why he was beloved and able to
be the leader of the country is he left people to govern
themselves at the local level and let the village and the
tribal leaders have their meetings and make their decisions. He
did not try to govern the country by having a centralized army
forcing everybody to do what his appointee in that area was
insisting. That is how he succeeded and in Afghanistan had
decades of relative stability, and after the Communist efforts
to unseat him and he was in exile in Rome, I believe the
greatest mistake we ever made was not bringing him back and
pressuring him to bring Karzai into a position of being able to
be in power, and so, right now, my analysis of what this
structure looks like is I find it difficult to tell the
difference between the structure that we have set up, a
centralized structure where one person is making the
appointments and they are trying to build a strong army in the
center and having foreign troops there to give added strength
to the central government, I don't see where we are any
different than what the Soviets were in when I first went to
Afghanistan 25 years ago. And the Soviets did not succeed, and
we won't succeed if that is what it is all about.
So I respect the fact that you and others are doing your
best to try to help our country succeed, and you are doing your
very best, and I know our military people are doing their very
best. I don't think that we have given, laid down the ground
rules in a way that will permit them to succeed, and the
American people can't go on like this. We may have signed a
contract to be with them for another 10 years. American people
don't want to be in Afghanistan another 10 years. We don't want
to be providing foreign military advisers there. We don't want
to be providing foreign aid there. We want to let those people
govern themselves, work through the systems that work with
their culture, not try to superimpose things, and leave with a
smile and say, we are your friends, but we are not your
keepers.
So, thank you, again, for what you are doing, and I agree,
I am very happy that you started your comments thanking the men
of the American military who sacrifice so much and people like
yourself have sacrificed for that, too.
With that said, I am going to give you the last word, 30
seconds.
Mr. Sampler. No, thank you very much.
Mr. Rohrabacher. With that said, I want to appreciate,
Larry, I appreciate you being here.
I appreciate the first witnesses, and I think we have had a
really honest dialogue and discussion today.
I think if we dig through all of this, we are going to find
some gems, and with that said, I hold this hearing adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 4:22 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]
A P P E N D I X
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