[House Hearing, 117 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
DEVELOPMENT ASSISTANCE DURING CONFLICT: LESSONS FROM AFGHANISTAN
=======================================================================
HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON
INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT, INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS
AND GLOBAL CORPORATE SOCIAL IMPACT
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED SEVENTEENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
OCTOBER 6, 2021
__________
Serial No. 117-82
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Foreign Affairs
[GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Available: http://www.foreignaffairs.house.gov/, http://docs.house.gov,
or http://www.govinfo.gov
___________
U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
45-939PDF WASHINGTON : 2022
COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS
GREGORY W. MEEKS, New York, Chairman
BRAD SHERMAN, California MICHAEL T. McCAUL, Texas, Ranking
ALBIO SIRES, New Jersey Member
GERALD E. CONNOLLY, Virginia CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, New Jersey
THEODORE E. DEUTCH, Florida STEVE CHABOT, Ohio
KAREN BASS, California JOE WILSON, South Carolina
WILLIAM KEATING, Massachusetts SCOTT PERRY, Pennsylvania
DAVID CICILLINE, Rhode Island DARRELL ISSA, California
AMI BERA, California ADAM KINZINGER, Illinois
JOAQUIN CASTRO, Texas LEE ZELDIN, New York
DINA TITUS, Nevada ANN WAGNER, Missouri
TED LIEU, California BRIAN MAST, Florida
SUSAN WILD, Pennsylvania BRIAN FITZPATRICK, Pennsylvania
DEAN PHILLIPS, Minnesota KEN BUCK, Colorado
ILHAN OMAR, Minnesota TIM BURCHETT, Tennessee
COLIN ALLRED, Texas MARK GREEN, Tennessee
ANDY LEVIN, Michigan ANDY BARR, Kentucky
ABIGAIL SPANBERGER, Virginia GREG STEUBE, Florida
CHRISSY HOULAHAN, Pennsylvania DAN MEUSER, Pennsylvania
TOM MALINOWSKI, New Jersey CLAUDIA TENNEY, New York
ANDY KIM, New Jersey AUGUST PFLUGER, Texas
SARA JACOBS, California PETER MEIJER, Michigan
KATHY MANNING, North Carolina NICOLE MALLIOTAKIS, New York
JIM COSTA, California RONNY JACKSON, Texas
JUAN VARGAS, California YOUNG KIM, California
VICENTE GONZALEZ, Texas MARIA ELVIRA SALAZAR, Florida
BRAD SCHNEIDER, Illinois
Sophia Lafargue, Staff Director
Brendan Shields, Republican Staff Director
------
Subcommittee on International Development, International Organizations
and Global Corporate Social Impact
JOAQUIN CASTRO, Texas, Chairman
SARA JACOBS, California NICOLE MALLIOTAKIS, New York,
BRAD SHERMAN, California Ranking Member
ILHAN OMAR, Minnesota CHRISTOPHER SMITH, New Jersey
CHRISSY HOULAHAN, Pennsylvania DARRELL ISSA, California
ANDY KIM, New Jersey LEE ZELDIN, New York
C O N T E N T S
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Page
WITNESSES
Sopko, The Honorable John F., Special Inspector General for
Afghanistan Reconstruction..................................... 7
APPENDIX
Hearing Notice................................................... 33
Hearing Minutes.................................................. 34
Hearing Attendance............................................... 35
RESPONSES TO QUESTIONS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD
Responses to questions submitted for the record.................. 36
DEVELOPMENT ASSISTANCE DURING CONFLICT: LESSONS FROM AFGHANISTAN
Wednesday, October 6, 2021
House of Representatives,
Subcommittee on International Development,
International Organizations, and Global Corporate
Social Impact,
Committee on Foreign Affairs,
Washington, DC.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 1:01 p.m., via
Webex, Hon. Joaquin Castro (chairman of the subcommittee)
presiding.
Mr. Castro. The Subcommittee on International Development,
International Organization, and Global Corporate Social Impact
will come to order.
Good morning, everyone. Thank you--or good afternoon. Thank
you to our witnesses for being here today for a hearing
entitled ``Development Assistance During Conflict: Lessons from
Afghanistan.''
Without objection, the chair is authorized to declare a
recess of the committee at any point. And all members will have
5 days to submit statements, extraneous material, and questions
for the record, subject to the length limitation in the rules.
To insert something into the record, please have your staff
email the previously mentioned address or contact full
committee staff.
And please keep your video function on at all times, even
when you are not recognized by the chair.
Members are responsible for muting and unmuting themselves,
and please remember to mute yourself after you finish speaking.
Consistent with remote committee proceedings of H. Res. 8,
staff will only mute members and witnesses as appropriate when
they are not under recognition to eliminate background noise.
I see that we have a quorum, and I will now recognize
myself for opening remarks.
Again, thank you all for joining us for today's hearing on
Afghanistan and specifically the lessons that our experiences
there hold for our Nation's development programs.
Like many Americans, I reacted to the events of August of
this year with sorrow. As the Taliban moved into city after
city over the course of 2 weeks, the Afghan Government's forces
melted away, often without a fight, and its leaders fled into
the wilderness or to another country.
Within 2 weeks, millions of Afghans found their lives
fundamentally changed and have been forced to navigate a new
reality. They were promised a different life by their leaders,
by the United States, and by the international community. The
gap between that promise and the reality they now face is why I
reacted with sorrow but not necessarily with surprise.
The seeds of the rapid collapse of the Afghan Government
and military weren't sown by any single decision the Biden
Administration made since taking office. It was the product of
a failure of the Afghan people to build a durable government
and military over 20 years and, yes, the failure of the United
States and the international community to help them do that.
Over the last two decades, the United States spent over $1
trillion, including almost $150 billion in Afghan
reconstruction and related activities. Our allies and partners
spent billions more.
Through two decades, measures of success constantly
changed, and successes were quickly followed by setbacks.
Corruption and waste by the Afghan Government, its military,
and too often by U.S. contractors followed that money.
There is no doubt that, in many ways, the lives of
Afghanistan were improved over two decades. Poverty was down,
health outcomes were better, and education was more widely
available. But these successes were built on top of an
unsustainable model that is collapsing as we speak.
I called this hearing because the Congress and this
committee need to take account of how we got here and look at
what lessons that holds for U.S. development priorities in
other areas of conflict and even in Afghanistan itself.
The last time the Special Inspector General was in front of
this committee to speak to lessons learned, the hope was that
what we learned would help us course-correct in Afghanistan.
The context of the conversation is very different today. There
is no U.S. presence in Afghanistan, and international
development, where it occurs, will have to navigate a maze of
legal challenges, sanctions, and unsavory actors.
A lot of the discussion in recent weeks has been how the
lack of a U.S. presence on the ground will require the military
to conduct, quote, ``over-the-horizon'' air strikes against
military targets, often with uncertain intelligence. We will
need to similarly adapt to a world of over-the-horizon
international development, relying on multilateral
organizations and other trusted partners to avoid a
humanitarian catastrophe in Afghanistan.
This is an entirely different set of challenges that we
face. We cannot course-correct anymore, but we can apply the
lessons learned to development work in other conflict zones,
whether that is Somalia, Syria, Libya, or the Sahel. The
challenges may not be at the same scale as Afghanistan, but
there are real commonalities that these experiences can inform.
The U.S. Government also has a critical tool to do
development in conflict zones, the Global Fragility Act,
bipartisan legislation that was signed into law in 2019. This
legislation aims to reduce violent conflict and structure how
we work with fragile States. The bill's genesis was informed in
many ways by the U.S. experience in Afghanistan, and I hope
that its implementation, which we are working with the
Administration on now, will be informed by those experiences as
well.
I am looking forward to the testimony today so that we can
develop a better record of the decisions over the two decades
that led to the failure of the Afghan Government to withstand
the Taliban offensive.
And, with that, I will now turn it over to Ranking Member
Malliotakis for her opening remarks.
Ms. Malliotakis. Thank you, Chairman Castro, for calling
this important hearing to discuss the U.S. development
assistance in Afghanistan. It is my hope that the committee
continues holding hearings to discuss what went disastrously
wrong with the U.S. withdrawal and what the future implications
are for U.S. national security.
Almost $145 billion has been appropriated for Afghanistan
relief and reconstruction since 2002. And while many important
gains were made during those years to support the people of
Afghanistan, especially to advance the rights of women and
children, increasing access to education, and supporting civil
society, there were also failures impossible to miss.
The series of reports released by the Special Inspector
General for Afghanistan Reconstruction on lessons learned from
our 20-year mission offers important takeaways. In the
aftermath of the botched withdrawal, however, we do need to
seriously question why the Biden Administration did not heed
those lessons, and we need to ask why, even now, our priorities
seem to be misplaced.
Today, it is clear what our number-one priority should be--
that is, ensuring the safety and security of U.S. citizens, our
lawful permanent residents, the SIVs, and at-risk Afghans who
supported U.S. policy objectives over the last 20 years and now
whose lives are in danger.
In this vein, we must continue to focus our tax dollars on
counterterrorism, especially in light of recent intelligence
reports which indicate that al-Qaeda could reemerge in 1 to 2
years in Afghanistan, notwithstanding the proven and deadly
threat of ISIS-K. Despite what Secretary Blinken Stated before
our committee last month, we can in no way trust the Taliban, a
terrorist organization itself, to ensure that Afghanistan does
not become a hotbed for violent extremism.
So far, however, the Administration seems content with
pursuing priorities other than national security. For example,
I am deeply concerned about premature conversations by the
Biden Administration to restart U.S. non-humanitarian aid
programs. Not only do key questions remain about the makeup and
structure of the Taliban-controlled Government of Afghanistan,
but, in addition to our citizens left behind, there are still
U.S. implementing partners trying to get their staff out of the
country.
Here is a number the Afghanistan--here is a number the
Administration does not like to cite. Over 10,000 current and
former USAID partner staff are still asking for help to be
evacuated. These are men and women that have worked alongside
us for over 20 years, implementing programs to advance critical
stabilization and recovery priorities. Getting these people to
safety needs to be this Administration's priority. We need to
show up for our partners that risk their own personal safety to
implement U.S.-funded programs. And, frankly, the lack of
urgency to address this critical issue is astounding.
We cannot afford to take any action, including resuming
non-humanitarian assistance programs, that would legitimize the
Taliban-controlled Government of Afghanistan.
One consequence of the withdrawal of the U.S. forces and
diplomats that is not being discussed enough is the limitations
on our ability to effectively monitor and implement U.S.
assistance programs. We have seen the destructive role that the
Taliban plays in provision of assistance before, from dictating
NGO operations to excluding women and children from
participating in programs.
Over 18 million Afghanistan civilians, nearly half the
population, are in dire need of humanitarian assistance after
the disastrous collapse of the country. With subsequent severe
economic downturn and the rapidly approaching winter months,
there is a clear need here, but with the Taliban in full
control, options are extremely limited. Because, to be clear,
we must not take any step to enable or provide any more
leverage to the Taliban government sitting in Kabul, and we
must be sure that not a single U.S. tax dollar ends up in their
hands.
So I hope that the Inspector General sheds light on how
ongoing aid programs in other security-restrictive environments
like Yemen, Somalia, Syria, and Iraq could inform the risks and
safeguards necessary for current and future assistance programs
in Afghanistan.
Mr. Sopko, I really look forward to your testimony.
And I yield back the balance of my time. Thank you.
Mr. Castro. Well, thank you, Ranking Member.
And before I introduce our distinguished witness, I want to
ask unanimous consent that Representative Meijer be allowed to
join this committee and ask questions following all the other
subcommittee members.
Without objection, we will allow Rep. Meijer to join.
And now I want to introduce our witness. We have with us
today the Honorable John F. Sopko, the Special Inspector
General for Afghanistan Reconstruction. Mr. Sopko has been in
this position since 2012 and has seen the situation in
Afghanistan change significantly over the last decade.
Thank you for joining us here today to speak about your
work, your findings, and help Congress chart a path forward.
I will now recognize Mr. Sopko for 5 minutes.
And, without objection, your prepared written statement
will be made part of the record, Mr. Sopko. Please.
STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE JOHN F. SOPKO, SPECIAL INSPECTOR
GENERAL FOR AFGHANISTAN RECONSTRUCTION
Mr. Sopko. Thank you very much.
Chairman Castro, Ranking Member Malliotakis, distinguished
members of the subcommittee, thank you for inviting me to
testify today.
Without a doubt, our country's experience in Afghanistan
has been costly. It lasted over 20 years, we spent over $145
billion on reconstruction, and we cannot forget that more than
2,400 Americans paid the ultimate price in defense of liberty
in Afghanistan. Additionally, over 21,000 of our troops were
wounded and continue to bear the scars of conflict.
These are sobering numbers, and we owe all who served in
Afghanistan as well as the long-suffering American taxpayer an
accurate accounting of what worked and what did not work in
that country.
Since Congress established SIGAR in 2008, we have publicly
issued over 600 audits and other reports, including 11
``lessons learned'' reports, in an attempt to do just that. Our
work demonstrates that no single policy decision nor
Administration led to the failure of our reconstruction effort.
Rather, it was a series of decisions made over two decades that
led to us this point.
The seeds of the collapse in Afghanistan were sown well
before the last 60 days, but the questions now are: What could
we have done differently, and what must we prepare to do
differently in the future?
For the sake of brevity, let me highlight just three key
areas from our reports for your consideration.
First, the U.S. Government's inability to get the right
people into the right jobs at the right time was one of the
reconstruction mission's most significant failures. While the
State Department has statutory authority, for example, to lead
security-sector assistance efforts overseas, it does not have
the personnel, expertise, or resources to do so.
This left the Defense Department to fill that void,
resulting in less-qualified and poorly trained personnel
undertaking key diplomatic and development roles. Additionally,
State and USAID experienced frequent staff turnovers in
Afghanistan, of a year or even less service there, leaving
their successors to start from scratch and make similar
mistakes all over again.
Second, U.S. Government agencies, including State and AID,
rarely conducted sufficient monitoring and evaluation, or M&E,
as we call it, to understand the impacts of their development
efforts. The absence of periodic reality checks created the
risk of doing the wrong thing perfectly. By that, I mean a
project that completed required tests would be labeled
successful, even though it did not achieve or contribute to
broader, more important goals.
If better monitoring and evaluation processes had been in
place to evaluate programs, to combat corruption, develop the
economy, build the Afghan security forces, many of the problems
that contributed to the rapid collapse of the Afghan State
could have been corrected. Measuring success by focusing on
dollars and cents is no substitute for common sense.
Third, and probably more importantly, the U.S. Government
did not understand the Afghan political and cultural context,
thereby leading to empowering corrupt power brokers and
politicians, forcing inappropriate Western technocratic models
on Afghan institutions, imposing formal Western rule of law on
a country that addressed most disputes through informal means,
and struggling to understand and mitigate cultural barriers to
supporting women and girls. This failure meant projects
intended to mitigate conflict often exacerbated it.
To be sure, State and AID had successes, but their
sustainability of those gains is obviously now in grave doubt.
Now, the book on Afghanistan is not yet closed. Questions
remain unanswered--questions that SIGAR has been tasked by
Congress to investigate, including the sudden collapse of the
Afghan Government and security forces. At the request of your
colleague, Chairman Bera, we will also be conducting an audit
of the Special Immigrant Visa program. I look forward to
working with this subcommittee and members as we undertake
these efforts.
And I look forward to answering all the questions have you
today.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Sopko follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Mr. Castro. Well, thank you for your testimony, Mr. Sopko.
And I will now recognize members for 5 minutes each. And,
pursuant to House rules, all time yielded is for the purposes
of questioning our witnesses.
Because of the virtual format of this hearing, I will now
recognize members by committee seniority, alternating between
majority and the minority. And I can only call on you if you
are present with your video on. If you miss you turn, please
let our staff know, and we will circle back to you. If you seek
recognition, you must unmute your microphone and address the
chair verbally.
And I will start by recognizing myself for the first
question.
Well, one common thread across SIGAR's work is how the
Department of Defense, given the reconstruction
responsibilities that it was, was ill-suited for that task
because--because it had the resources to do it, but the State
Department and USAID may have been able to do those things
better.
I asked you about this issue when you last testified in
front of the committee, in January of last year, and one of the
takeaways was to increase staffing and presence of diplomats in
the field. But much of this is the product of how Washington
decisions are made.
Now, the Biden Administration has given the USAID
Administrator a seat on the National Security Council, which is
a first. And this can balance some of the discussions at the
interagency and is a welcome recognition of the role
development can play in advancing our national security.
Can you speak to how the DOD was able to crowd out State or
USAID in Afghanistan? And what more can be done to ensure that
critical voices are not left out of the conversation when
discussing these issues?
Mr. Sopko. DOD did not crowd them out for nefarious
reasons. It was just, I think, the reality of the situation.
Their funding overwhelmed State and AID. They also had the
capability to get into areas that were not safe. And that is
another problem you have to realize.
You know, some State Department and AID officials jokingly
said, ``We were out-PowerPointed.'' You talk about some of the
meetings and the organizations that were set up in which there
was supposed to be equal membership from State, AID, and DOD,
and maybe there would be 1 person from AID and 1 person from
State and 20 people from DOD.
That is a particular problem. It is enhanced in Afghanistan
because we wanted fast results, quick results. And I think
there was a frustration expressed by DOD that State and AID and
regular development--and we all know and you particularly on
the committee should realize that development takes time. You
cannot do development or reconstruction in months or even half
a year or a year. It takes time.
And what happened is, DOD was given the reins to do a lot
of the development aid and did not know how to do it, did not
have the capability, did not have the expertise. And that is
particularly a problem.
It is a problem, basically, of funding. We tend to view
more bodies in State and AID as a waste of money, but we do not
if we are talking about the Defense Department. And I think
until we get over that and realize State and AID have important
missions, they have to be fully funded.
Mr. Castro. All right. No, thank you.
And in your most recent report, you note that contractors
were often used to travel to places that were deemed too
dangerous for U.S. Government employees. This made the U.S.
Government dependent on contractors to do oversight of
projects, which meant there was little to no actual oversight
over the projects.
This problem of U.S. personnel being stuck in embassies and
unable to get into the field is, of course, not unique to
Afghanistan. But as we explore doing development in other
conflict zones, how can the United States ensure that
diplomatic and development personnel are able to get out into
the field in the same way that contractors are?
Mr. Sopko. The ultimate thing is, Congress, the American
people, and the Administration, whoever is in the White House,
Democrat or Republican, has to realize that diplomacy is never
going to be totally risk-free.
We expect and we understand when DOD takes calculated
risks. There has been a tendency--and I saw this over time in
Afghanistan--a fear among State Department officials and AID
officials to take risk. As a result, people did not leave the
compounds, people did not go over the wire and do work they
need to do. And I think it is because they were afraid they
would get in trouble if somebody got hurt.
I am not talking about recklessness; I am talking about--
there is State Department. If you talk to the average State
Department official or AID official, they understand they have
to take risks. You have to let them take those calculated
risks. Then we do not have to worry about contractors doing
their job or worry about DOD doing the job.
I think that is the--it is the approach we have to risk-
taking in the diplomatic field. We have to resolve that.
Mr. Castro. No, well, thank you, sir.
And I want to pass it over to the ranking member for her
questions.
Ms. Malliotakis. No, thank you very much. I appreciate what
you are saying here today. And it seems that, you know, this is
an issue where, I think, Republicans and Democrats can
certainly agree we want to make sure the taxpayer money is
being used properly.
I have a question relating to, you know, can we--or, if we
can, how--can we ensure that this money does not get into
Taliban hands?
Mr. Sopko. Well, currently all funding, except I think a
very small amount of humanitarian aid, has been stopped, so it
is not getting into Taliban hands. But----
Ms. Malliotakis. Well, if we were----
Mr. Sopko [continuing]. If the spigot is opened--I am
sorry?
Ms. Malliotakis. No. Sorry. Please continue.
Mr. Sopko. Yes. If the spigot is opened, it is going to be
difficult to do it, far more difficult, because we do not have
people on the ground.
There are ways to look at it, but the first thing we should
consider is, we should put conditions on it to make certain we
have access, whether it is SIGAR or somebody else, has access
to books and records and, remotely, can monitor how it is being
done.
It is going to be extremely difficult. We had problems
monitoring it even with a friendly, though incompetent,
Afghan--and corrupt Afghan Government. We will definitely have
more problems. But you have to put those conditions on it.
And you have to enforce the conditions. And we do not have
a good track record on that. And we have highlighted that over
the years. We did not really put strong conditions and hold the
Afghans' feet to the fire on that.
And I hope we have learned from that and we realize, if we
give money to the Taliban, we are going to have to try to watch
how the money is being spent.
Ms. Malliotakis. I agree with you wholeheartedly, and that
is why I pause when we are having this discussion about sending
more money.
As Inspector General, what kind of fraud have you seen? You
have talked about waste. We know that there has been tons of
waste. Any particular egregious examples of fraud that you can
point to?
Mr. Sopko. Oh, we saw it everywhere. I mean, probably the
biggest and most talked about are the ghosts--ghost soldiers,
ghost police we saw over there, where the Afghan Government
created out of whole cloth individuals that did not exist. We
ended up paying the salaries. We ended up not only paying the
salaries, but we paid everything that went to supporting a
soldier or a policeman.
Likewise, the international bodies--and I know this
subcommittee has jurisdiction over international
organizations--we found the same problem with international
organizations, where they were paying salaries or paying for
things and they did not monitor and evaluate. And this, in
particular, was very difficult for us, because a lot of the
international organizations wouldn't let us in to take a look
at the books and records. So that is--we saw that a lot.
Fuel disappearing. Over 50 percent of the fuel we bought
for the Afghan Government, for their police, their soldiers,
and for the government itself, was stolen--50 percent.
Ms. Malliotakis. Wow.
Mr. Sopko. And we had a wonderful case that I gave to
President Ghani shortly after he was inaugurated. He said he
was going to do something about it. Well, we saw price fixing
to the tune of--costing the U.S. taxpayer over $250 million
extra on a $1 billion contract. He never did a thing on it, nor
did his attorney general, nor did anyone else.
Ms. Malliotakis. The same----
Mr. Sopko. So the whole time--yes?
Ms. Malliotakis. The same President Ghani who fled with
$169 million, as was reported by the BBC and other outlets.
Mr. Sopko. Well, we haven't proven that yet. We are looking
into that. Actually, the Oversight and Government Reform
Committee has asked us to look into that.
But there are allegations, but not only with President
Ghani. There are allegations with senior officials in their
finance ministry, their central bank, and a number of other
ministries walking off with millions of dollars. But, again,
those are just allegations.
Ms. Malliotakis. Yes.
Mr. Sopko. We have not confirmed any of those yet.
Ms. Malliotakis. And I appreciate that.
What metrics can Congress put in place to ensure that the
money is being spent appropriately but also that you are
getting the intended results along the way, so, that way,
programs can be cutoff or money can be diverted if we are not
seeing intended results? Do you have any recommendations?
Mr. Sopko. Well, we issued an entire report on that, and I
do not think we have enough time in----
Ms. Malliotakis. Yes. Yes.
Mr. Sopko. --23 seconds. But the monitoring and evaluation
report that we issued earlier this year, I would highly
recommend----
Ms. Malliotakis. OK.
Mr. Sopko [continuing]. Taking a look at that.
We talk about the need for effective monitoring and
evaluation. And it has to be realistic. And you have to look at
what the end result is. We are pretty good at doing inputs and
outputs, but never looking at the outcomes. And you have to
hold State, AID, and DOD to having met the outcomes that they
tell you they are supposed to result in. And if you do not--
that is the biggest problem we saw.
The ultimate monitoring and evaluation that was done in
Afghanistan was at the end, because they falsified or ignored
all the bad results on M&E for the years and years that we have
been raising concerns. And the ultimate M&E, the ultimate
monitoring and evaluation, was: Could the Afghan Government
stand on its own? And we saw what the results were.
If we had had effective monitoring and evaluation, if we
had actually held their feet to the fire over the last 10
years, I say we wouldn't have ended up where we are today, with
a nonexistent Afghan Government.
Ms. Malliotakis. Thank you. And if it is happening there,
it is happening in Yemen and Syria and Iraq, potentially, and
other countries.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Sopko. It is not my job to look at those other
countries----
Ms. Malliotakis. Sure.
Mr. Sopko [continuing]. But I think, take our report--and
we have briefed State and AID on this, and I must say they are
listening now--and take our report and see if they are doing it
in these other countries.
You raise an excellent point, ma'am.
Ms. Malliotakis. Thank you.
Mr. Castro. All right. Thank you.
We will go the vice chair of the committee, Sara Jacobs.
Ms. Jacobs. Well, thank you, Mr. Chair.
And thank you, Inspector General Sopko, for being here and
for all of your work over the years to make sure that we try to
learn some of these lessons in Afghanistan.
First, I wanted to thank you for your answer to Chairman
Castro's question about diplomats being able to travel and
risk-taking. We actually are working on a bill in that regard
right now, to try and make sure that our diplomats are able to
get outside and actually talk to people and understand what is
going on and take the necessary risk to do the job well.
I wanted to ask you a little bit, kind of, a meta-question,
let's say. I think we tend to do these big reviews and lessons
learned. I have read many of your reports, but, you know, we
actually know that, even though you have a lot of these great
lessons, that there are a lot of needed reforms and lessons
that haven't actually been implemented, and especially, as we
are seeing now, stabilization operations across Africa,
particularly in the Sahel, that could use some reorientation
and potentially are suffering from many of the same failures we
are talking about today.
Given your experience watching this process in Afghanistan,
how do you think we should make sure we pivot before it is too
late? In other words, what would actually be required to
intervene in the interagency process, identify and communicate
the failures, identify what needs to change, and make that come
to fruition?
Because it is clear to me that more money and more
strategies and more oversight reports do not necessarily lead
to this change. So what would? And how can Congress be a
partner on that?
Mr. Sopko. Congresswoman, that is an excellent question,
and you hit the nail on the head. And the answer is to look at
the role of Congress. You control the purse strings.
And doing oversight--and I used to work for one of the
greatest chairmen in recent history, John Dingell. And he knew
that oversight was what Congress should do. And this is
bipartisan, nonpartisan oversight. And that means not just
calling in the Secretary of State, but that means digging
deeply and looking at particular programs.
And, Congresswoman, if you have allegations, if you have
concerns about what we are doing in Africa or what we are doing
in Haiti, then the chairman and the ranking member should work
on getting your staff to start asking some tough questions. And
do not end by just bringing in the Secretary of State. You
cannot require him to know everything. You have to find the
people who are running that program.
So, ultimately, it is Congress's role. And if you do not
get answers, do not fund the program. And I am old-school. I
worked for almost 25 years on the Senate and the House. And it
is the role of Congress to protect the taxpayers' purse. And it
is through oversight and withholding funds and sending messages
to certain errant bureaucrats.
Bring them up. Hold people accountable, Congresswoman. Hold
people accountable. All of the reports we have done? No one in
the government has been held accountable. I always joke that
the only person who is ever going to get fired over Afghanistan
is probably going to be me, nobody else--not the generals who
came up and spun and spun and spun and the Ambassadors and AID
administrators who gave bogus data to you. None of them have
been held accountable. You have to hold people accountable,
ma'am.
Ms. Jacobs. OK. Well, thank you.
And, my staff, if you are listening, sounds like we have
some work to do.
I wanted to move on to the Global Fragility Act. I know in
your latest SIGAR report you talked about the lack of
administrative capacity to carry out programs. And the Global
Fragility Act right now dictates that no more than 5 percent
can be spent on administrative expenses to ensure that, you
know, the money is actually going to our partners and to
assistance. But, obviously, as you point out, capacity of our
agencies to carry out their work is incredibly important.
So what kind of investment in our capacity at both State
and USAID do you believe is required for GFA to be successful?
[Audio interruption.]
Mr. Sopko. I am sorry. I am hearing another question.
I am sorry. Somebody is speaking over you, Congresswoman.
Mr. Castro. Everybody, please mute themselves unless they
are speaking.
Mr. Sopko. I am terribly sorry. I couldn't hear your
question, Congresswoman.
Ms. Jacobs. That is OK. I was asking about GFA and the 5
percent to Administration and what you think actually would be
required to be able to adequately implement GFA at State and
AID.
Mr. Sopko. You know, we haven't specifically looked at that
issue, and I am sorry, I cannot answer that. I can have my
staff look into it.
What we are just saying is that civilian agencies are going
to be carrying out what I think is a very important statute but
you are not giving them any more resources to do it. And we saw
what happens when they are underresourced, in Afghanistan and
Iraq.
So I do not know what the number is, but I am happy to get
back to you and try to give you a number on that.
Ms. Jacobs. OK. That would be great.
Thank you so much. Thank you again for all your work.
And, Mr. Chair, I yield back.
Mr. Castro. Thank you, Vice Chair.
All right. Darrell Issa is next. But, Darrell--you do not
have your video on, Darrell. I will take 5 seconds to see if
you are there.
If not, Ms. Tenney is next, but she is not on video either.
All right.
Ms. Houlahan, you are up.
Ms. Houlahan. Thanks. Can you all hear me OK?
Mr. Sopko. Yes, I can.
Ms. Houlahan. Excellent. Thanks.
My questions have to do with the Taliban and particularly
women.
The Taliban are continuing to send a lot of mixed signals
on whether women will be allowed to work or participate in
social and economic activities, which, of course, directly
impacts the ability of women and girls to access critical
services and aid.
So I was wondering if you could help me understand, how can
the United States and our international partners effectively or
better engage the Taliban on principled humanitarian access,
ensuring for the equitable distribution of humanitarian aid,
particularly at this time when women and girls are confined to
home due to insecurity and the Taliban's crackdowns?
Mr. Sopko. That is a very good question, and,
unfortunately, I do not have a good answer. We have lost all
ability, first of all, to really know how bad the situation is
for women and girls, as well as a lot of other Afghans, but we
also do not have much leverage.
Now, the best thing I can say, Congresswoman, is, we need
to get the intel of what is going on. We can get that from the
media that is there and other sources, just to find out how
good or how bad the Afghan Taliban are doing. We cannot trust
what they say. They are pretty good at PR this time around.
But if we do do any funding--and I am not advocating that
we give a dime to the Taliban government, so just know that--
remember, what do they want? And how do we ensure, if we give
them anything that they want, we get something in return?
So I think it is going to have to be smart conditionality,
strong conditionality. And we are going to have to be willing
to say no if they are not living up to their commitments on a
number of issues, including counterterrorism, human rights
violations, et cetera.
That is the best I can give you. We are in a very poor spot
to try to help the women, the girls, and the average Afghans
right now.
Ms. Houlahan. Yes, I agree. That definitely keeps me up at
night.
And I am going to ask my second question and hopefully have
time to ask a followup----
Mr. Sopko. Sure.
Ms. Houlahan [continuing]. To this one.
Secretary Blinken testified before us last month, and he
announced that the State Department would appoint a special
envoy to focus on Afghan women's issues.
How do we make sure that that role is effective, given what
we have just been talking about? And how can the U.S. advance
accountability mechanisms to prevent harm to women and girls in
other conflict-affected contexts?
Mr. Sopko. Well, I hope whoever they appoint is aggressive
and savvy and has the ability to call upon all the resources of
the U.S. Government to find out what is going on. And also I
hope that, when that person, whoever it is, has the ability
then to brief the Secretary and brief Congress on a regular
basis on what the problem is and to work out the solution, I
hope it is not window dressing. You know, there are many
Ambassadors floating around this country who I think are more
window dressing than reality.
So you want to make certain, whoever that person is,
Congress interviews them, Congress finds out what is his brief,
what is his authorities, can he find out, and then what he is
going to do with the information. So pull the thread.
I think it is a great idea, a special Ambassador, just as
long as the special Ambassador does something and has the
ability to do something.
Ms. Houlahan. And with the last waning seconds of my time,
I am wondering, you mentioned, you know, do not give something
without getting something in return if, for whatever reason, we
move forward with support or direct money to the Taliban-led
government.
What would be an example or two or three of what you would
think of in terms of getting something in return?
Mr. Sopko. Well, if they wanted access, let's say, to the
$8 billion we froze in the Federal Reserve, you would want to
get an assurance that is verifiable by either U.S. Government
or an international body that they are respecting the rights of
women. That means somebody on the ground with the ability, just
like weapons inspectors we have used in the past.
I remember, when we gave money to the former Soviet Union,
right, before the collapse and after the collapse on nuclear
proliferation and other issues, we required them, the Russians
and the former Soviet Union, to allow GAO inspectors in. Now,
Russia is not the same as Afghanistan, the Taliban aren't the
same as the Kremlin, but that's the type of thing. OK, you want
our money? Then inspectors come along with it.
Ms. Houlahan. Thank you, sir.
Mr. Sopko. You remember, when we did the Marshall Plan,
when we did the Marshall Plan after World War II, we had
somebody from the U.S. Government sitting in every office in
France, Germany, Belgium, et cetera, to ensure that the money
got spent.
Now, that is the old days. You can do it with technology
now a lot better than having somebody sit there. But you have
to have somebody out there to kick the tires who can actually
independently determine if the Taliban are living up to their
agreements.
Ms. Houlahan. Thank you. I really appreciate your time.
And I yield back.
Mr. Castro. Thank you, Ms. Houlahan.
Darrell Issa.
Mr. Issa. Thank you.
I am going to followup on the last round of questioning and
ask it in sort of a negative way but, I think, assertively.
Isn't it true that when we left Afghanistan we basically
left 37 million people to the historic rule of the Taliban
under sharia law and a sixth-century mentality?
Mr. Sopko. Well, we left the Afghan people to the current
Afghan Government. So I cannot say if it is all sharia law, and
I cannot say fourth century. But the obvious is that we are not
there and there is no Ghani government, so we left them to a
government run by the Taliban.
Mr. Issa. But, historically, that government, you know,
when they ran things the last time, did not respect what we
would consider women's rights. Or, more specifically, they
believed in women's rights that were so different than ours
that we would call them inhumane. Women are taken out of school
at a very early age. They are not going to get the kind of
education that we are used to.
There are a lot of those things that are just a given at
this point, unless you assume that they have somehow changed
their ways, which there seems to be no indication.
Mr. Sopko. I have not seen any indication that they have
changed their ways, other than to have better public relations.
And, again, Congressman Issa, I know you and I go back
years when you were on the House Oversight and Government
Reform Committee. Back then, as well as now, I have not met an
Afghan woman who trusts the Taliban.
Mr. Issa. Now, your reports leading up to the collapse of
the Afghan military predicted that it would fold, that, in
fact, it was not stable. Isn't that true?
Mr. Sopko. Well, we predicted it would fold. We did not
predict it would fold as fast as it did.
Mr. Issa. But, if you predicted it would fold, then the
decision to leave Afghanistan was, by definition, a decision to
leave it to the Taliban and their interpretation of justice,
law, and where the world should go, correct?
Mr. Sopko. I cannot say that that was the purpose of the
decision or whatever----
Mr. Issa. Well, were your--your reports were run through
the system, so they were seen by people at the highest levels
of the State Department, correct?
Mr. Sopko. All of our reports are public, and they have
been public for as long as I have been there, so almost 10
years.
Mr. Issa. So is there any other conclusion one could reach
when you say that it will inevitably collapse but that we were
going to leave the people, the 37 million people, of
Afghanistan to the rule and control of the Taliban?
Mr. Sopko. I wouldn't draw that conclusion. Our conclusions
were more that the government or the military would probably
collapse over a period of time. We did not know who was going
to replace it. The Taliban was out there. There could have been
another government that came in, non-Taliban, that replaced the
Ghani regime, which was basically----
Mr. Issa. So----
Mr. Sopko [continuing]. Viewed as incompetent. So I did
not--we did not say Taliban is the next one in line.
Mr. Issa. Well, but besides that----
Mr. Sopko. We just----
Mr. Issa. Right. But besides the Taliban and ISIS-K, is
there another significant group that you could name that had a
reasonable possibility, from a military and government
standpoint, of taking control of Afghanistan?
Mr. Sopko. Well, right now, I wouldn't want to name them,
but I think there were a number of warlords and other
politicians and political groups that could have. And I think
there was some evidence that they were planning to take over--
maybe not democratically, but they were.
So there were a number of groups out there, I think, who
were strongmen, reasonable leaders, that were looking to take
over.
Mr. Issa. Thank you.
I yield back.
Mr. Castro. Thank you, Mr. Issa.
Mr. Meijer.
Mr. Meijer. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for allowing me to
participate in this subcommittee hearing and to the rest of the
subcommittee for allowing it with the unanimous consent.
And thank you, Mr. Sopko, for being here today.
You know, I spent late 2013 to mid-2015 in Afghanistan,
flew in and out of Kabul's airport, and saw those Italian
G.222s----
Mr. Sopko. Yep.
Mr. Meijer [continuing]. Sitting there, gathering dust, and
then, 1 day, they were all in a pile of scrap metal, $549
million worth of investment gone down.
And I appreciated your testimony and all of your reporting,
which, you know, as my colleague Ms. Jacobs said, you know,
some of us were reading those.
I guess, you know, you mentioned, you know, the need for
Congress to reprise its oversight capabilities in this area.
And, I guess, what do you attribute to the failure of Congress
to really ask those tough questions or, even if those tough
questions were being asked, for any action to have been taken
on behalf them over the past, you know, two decades but
probably more acutely the last decade?
Mr. Sopko. Congress, you are pulling me way beyond my
brief. I do reconstruction. I do not--in Afghanistan. I do not
look at, you know, congressional foibles or prerogatives.
Mr. Meijer. Understood, sir.
Mr. Sopko. Yes, so--but, I mean, you know, when I retire,
maybe I will write a book about that.
But, I mean, it is--it is difficult to change--and I think
you appreciate this. Once you start a war, it is hard to change
it. I mean, it is a slippery slope, and, you know, it keeps
going down, down and down and down. And there are more and more
people who are involved in it. And everybody thinks, just one
more cycle, just another year, another 6 months, we are going
to turn the corner.
That is the difficulty. It is the difficulty of changing a
ship at stake. As it is moving down that river, how do you get
it to turn? I mean, it is almost like, we saw what happened
when that big ship in the Suez just turned a little and it got
stuck. That is the difficulty.
But Congress has to do effective oversight. The IGs do, but
by the time we get there, the body is dead and cold and it is
maybe removed, and all we have is a chalk outline of an audit
or a program that is dead. You are there in the beginning. And
the congressional committees have to do that.
And it was President Wilson who said, the role of oversight
for Congress is as important, if not more important, than the
role of legislating.
So I am biased toward the oversight.
Mr. Meijer. Well, I appreciate that.
And I will direct this next question to be a little bit
more within your scope. Obviously, you have gone through a
litany----
Mr. Sopko. OK.
Mr. Meijer [continuing]. Of the failures that have been
witnessed, of fraud, waste, abuse, mismanagement.
You mentioned earlier the fuel surcharge and those, kind
of, corruption components. We have seen other reports on, you
know, the extent to which, you know, extortion rackets or
security forces or security services, private security
services, were essentially set up as ways of getting money out
of the U.S., creating security threats and then profiting from
it.
Did you ever, in your reporting, come to an estimate of how
much of the Taliban's funding may have been through U.S. funds
that were being either, you know, extorted or skimmed or bribed
or otherwise?
Mr. Sopko. I do not think we did. There were estimates, but
I am afraid to give them now because I think they could have
been classified.
But we assumed that Taliban got about a third of their
money through either the corruption or narcotics, and then a
third through taxing, and a third through donations.
But that is the best I can say at this point. I can try to
get back to you, Congressman, if you want, and the committee on
that, but I am afraid to go much further.
Mr. Meijer. I appreciate that.
And I want to end on a positive note. So your reports, kind
of, showed many of the failures. At any time in your
investigations and in your work, did you find success stories
that you can share?
Mr. Sopko. Oh, oh, absolutely. I mean, I think there were
successes with healthcare. There were successes with education.
There were successes with the mortality rate among Afghans in
general, not as much as was exaggerated by the former
Administrator of the USAID sometime ago, but there were
successes in all of those areas.
The National Solidarity Programme was a great success. I
think some of the State Department programs supporting a free
and independent media--there were small programs--they were a
success. Some of the money--and, again, these were small
programs--supporting civil society organizations were a
success.
So there were successes. But, overall, there were a lot of
failures.
Mr. Meijer. Yes. Thank you, Mr. Sopko. And I think we
should learn from the successes and make sure we learn even
more from the failures.
And thank you, Mr. Chairman. With that, I yield back.
Mr. Castro. All right. Thank you, Mr. Meijer, for joining
us today.
And we are going to go to a quick second round of
questions, and I am going to start off. And, members, if you
have questions--I do not want to call on folks if they do not
have a question. So I know Ms. Jacobs has one, the vice chair
has one. If you have a question, then send me something in the
chat, if you can, or let our staff know, the subcommittee
staff, and they will let me know.
So, Mr. Sopko, a few followup questions for you.
And part of the charge of the mission of this committee is
also on global corporate social impact. And I want to ask you
your role or your assessment of U.S. companies and corporations
and their work in Afghanistan--defense contractors, of course,
but other kinds of contractors that were used. Any positive and
negative impacts that they had?
I know that you talked about the corruption in Afghanistan
and the Afghan money and pilfering money and so forth. What
role did U.S. contractors play in any of that? If you could
speak to that as well.
Mr. Sopko. Well, most--I mean, I cannot come up with a
number, but I would say most contractors, whether defense
contractors, aid contractors, or whatever, did a good job or
did as best the job they could with the contracts that were
written.
The problem with many of the contracts is that we really--
and this was a government fault--we did not hold the
contractors accountable. And we also did not specifically look
to see if those contracts actually accomplished anything.
And, again, I urge the members to read our monitoring and
evaluation, where, you know, it was the risk of doing the wrong
thing perfectly. So we would give contracts to American
contractors or foreign ones, and they did everything to the
letter of the contract, but it accomplished nothing. That is
not the contractor's fault; that is the fault of whoever wrote
the contract----
Mr. Castro. Well, let me--I guess, let me drill down for a
second.
Mr. Sopko. Yes.
Mr. Castro. Now, so you are saying that, I guess, military
leaders or the Administration, successive Administrations,
whether it may have been DOD or the State Department or USAID,
that they alone came up with that mission. Were they influenced
by these contractors at some point that were lobbying them to
do certain things in Afghanistan? Or are you absolving those
contractors of any role in convincing them to go in a wayward
direction?
Mr. Sopko. Yes, I am not absolving some of the contractors.
We indicted some and put them in jail. We just got a plea from
somebody today on a contractor or a subcontractor.
I am just saying, that, to me, it was the bigger problem,
is contractors doing everything to meet the contract but it did
not accomplish anything at the end. So that, to me, is a bigger
waste.
Now, there were contractors that did substandard work.
Those were mainly a lot of subs that came in, and what happened
is, contracts were being sold from sub to sub to sub. The other
thing is, there were a lot of sole-source contracts that did
not follow the acquisition rules. That was a major problem, and
that is where we saw a lot of problems.
There were the contractors--like, somebody mentioned the
G.222. That was $400 million to $500 million for airplanes that
did not fly, or did not fly too well, and were basically turned
into scrap. That was a situation where I believe the
contractors did not live up to the contract and produced
insufficient goods.
I do not have, you know, an estimate one way or the other.
I think you could read our reports on some of the major
problems with contractors, but I do not like to paint all the
contractors with one brush. That is----
Mr. Castro. Sure.
Mr. Sopko [continuing]. The point I am trying to make.
Mr. Castro. Sure.
Mr. Sopko. Many of them did. Actually, many of the
contractors--I won't say ``many''--a number of contractors came
to us and told us on the QT, you know, ``This is ridiculous,
what they are asking to us do.''
Mr. Castro. Sure.
Mr. Sopko. We had contractors that came to us saying, ``The
timeline is totally ridiculous.''
I mean, we had the woman who provided those sexy white
goats, Italian goats, that were flown in to, you know, fool
around with less sexy Afghan goats to produce mohair or
whatever--that woman just went through the roof. You know,
``This is ridiculous. There is no way you could do this in 6
months. It would take you at least 6 to 10 years.'' But the----
Mr. Castro. But, I mean, who gets--like, on that, right,
who gets talked into that idea? Or does some administrator come
up with that on their own, a bureaucrat comes up with that on
their own? Because you are dealing with companies that have
extensive lobbying--as you know; you worked in Congress----
Mr. Sopko. Yes.
Mr. Castro [continuing]. Have extensive lobbying operations
to convince people to do different things. So I am wondering,
you know, do these administrators or bureaucrats just decide on
their own to do this crazy stuff, or are they getting talked
into some of that?
Mr. Sopko. Well, in that case with our goats, she did not
have a lobbyist, that is for sure. She just, you know, signed
up for it, did it, and just quit in disgust. So I put that
aside.
We did not see any evidence of a lobbyist directing this.
We looked for that--directing some stupid contract. We looked
for it, but we did not find that. So I cannot attest to that.
It could have occurred. We did not find it. So I cannot answer
it.
Mr. Castro. Fair enough. No, well, thank you.
All right. I am going to yield back the time. And I know
that Representative Jacobs has questions, and then I think
Representative Meijer after that will have a question.
Vice Chair?
Ms. Jacobs. Well, thank you. And thanks for letting us do
two rounds.
I wanted to keep digging on this question of USAID
contracting. I think that, you know, you talked about how it is
the contract and the contracting itself that is a problem.
You know, could you talk a little bit about some of the
impediments to changing contracts and, in particular, if there
was a difference between how large NGO's and smaller NGO's were
dealt with?
In particular, we know smaller NGO's had a hard time
working with USAID, but was there any evidence that those
smaller NGO's were actually less impactful? Was this more of an
administrative capacity? How can we improve USAID's ability to
work with those smaller NGO's if they are, in fact, just as or
more effective?
Mr. Sopko. I would have to get back to you with more
details on that.
Overall, I think the successes we saw, the more important--
I won't say ``more important,'' but the more successful
contracts were usually smaller, and usually smaller NGO's doing
them. And I do not know if I can draw any conclusion from that.
We did hear a lot of complaints by small NGO's that it was
difficult for them to contract with USAID, but I do not have
the particulars on that right now. I apologize. I can get back
to you.
Small, actually, was better. You know, my gut reaction--we
do not have an audit on that--but spending a lot of money did
not--and, as you can see from my reports, that was a problem we
saw. We thought if we could throw more money at the situation,
it would improve.
Now, there are also some small subcontractors or
contractors who did a horrible job. But there are some major
contractors--I mean, some of these issues--and I can talk about
the rule-of-law program, an important program. But, you know, I
saw so much--and I do not know if these were big contractors or
small contractors--where it looked like it was, you know, a
tourism job, or program, for lawyers in the ABA.
So I would end up having to talk to lawyers coming in on
this rule-of-law program who couldn't spell ``Afghanistan,''
who had no concept of the culture and the law they were doing
it. But they were being paid by--I do not know if it was a
major contractor or a subcontractor, to fly over to Afghanistan
for a couple weeks or a month to talk of old war stories about
how they were a prosecutor or a defense attorney or they did
corporate work for AT&T, which has no relevancy to Afghanistan.
Now, I cannot tell you who brought them over, but we kept
running into them.
Likewise, we saw major contractors at the--the Promote
program was a real boneheaded program, to be very blunt, where
they were hiring people because they had to show success
immediately. That was some major contractors. They were hiring
kids off the street whose only qualification was that they were
a carbon life form and breathing. They did not know anything
about women's issues.
And I had Mrs. Ghani even tell me that. You created this
program in which, to enter it, you had to be a high-school
graduate. And she said, ``By definition, that eliminated 90
percent of the women in Afghanistan.'' And you, as the AID
Administrator, were saying this was going to be the greatest
successful program for women in the history of the United
States? I mean, Mrs. Ghani quit in disgust from even talking to
those people.
So I cannot tell you--that was a large contractor. I do not
know who it was. But they were so desperate, they just were
hiring college kids whose only qualification----
Ms. Jacobs. Well, actually, could I jump in and ask----
Mr. Sopko. Yes.
Ms. Jacobs [continuing]. A followup on this question?
Mr. Sopko. Yes.
Ms. Jacobs. You know, I think part of it, as we have sort
of talked about before, is that we had folks who did not really
understand the context of Afghanistan----
Mr. Sopko. Right.
Ms. Jacobs [continuing]. And what they were working on, in
part because of the rapid turnover of----
Mr. Sopko. Yes.
Ms. Jacobs [continuing]. Civilian and military staff. As
you know, Afghanistan, people stay 1 year versus 2 and 3. That
is----
Mr. Sopko. Yes.
Ms. Jacobs [continuing]. Typical of an FSO rotation.
How legitimate is the concern of the risk of clientitis?
And how do we go about balancing that with our need for our
folks to actually be understanding and experts in the countries
they are serving so we do not keep making these mistakes?
Mr. Sopko. Well, you have to write it into the contract,
make certain these people have some knowledge. And somebody who
is reviewing the contract should insist--and this goes back to
monitoring and evaluation--that it sounds logical for a country
like Afghanistan or like a country like Haiti.
I think you asked the question before, or maybe some other
member, about, is this going on in Africa and other places? It
very well could. And that is what my staff tells me who
produced that lessons learned report, because we are not
writing good contracts. The government is a horrible
organization for writing contracts.
And this is what I have said before. It is not that the
people in Afghanistan who worked for the U.S. Government were
evil or bad or stupid. We gave them a box of broken tools. And
I have used that term before, and that is what we did. Our
contracting authority is broken. Our H.R. program is broken.
Our appropriations cycle is broken. How we reward people in the
government is broken. You need to fix that.
I mean, I had contracting officers who repeatedly told me,
``The only thing I am judged on is how much money I put on
contract, not whether any of the contracts work. And by the
time my tour is done, I do not even care if they work or not.
You are gone. You do not stick around long enough to be held
accountable.'' That needs to be fixed.
And you need to look at what is going on in Africa and
around the world with AID contracting and State contracting and
DOD contracting right now. It could be just as bad, but I do
not know. That is not my job, to look at USAID outside of
Afghanistan.
Ms. Jacobs. Right.
Well, thank you, Mr. Chair. We have a lot of work to do on
this committee, and I will yield back.
Mr. Castro. Well, thank you, Vice Chair.
And, Mr. Sopko and committee members, that concludes our
questions.
Mr. Sopko, first of all, thank you for all of your years of
hard work and earnest examination and analysis of both our
successes and our failures in Afghanistan. And we absolutely
heed your advice and your warning about being aggressive in our
oversight.
And so, thank you for everything. And, you know, you still
have your job there, so they haven't fired you. You joked you
would be the only one that got fired. You still have your job,
which is good. We are glad for that. And, again, just want to
say thank you for being with us.
Mr. Sopko. Thank you. And if we can help you at all, Mr.
Chairman, do not hesitate to call us. We are here to help.
Mr. Castro. Thank you. Absolutely.
And that concludes our hearing, and we will adjourn. Thank
you.
Mr. Sopko. Thank you.
[Whereupon, at 2:05 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]
APPENDIX
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RESPONSES TO QUESTIONS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD
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