The Pentagon spent $150 million in Afghanistan renting “villas” and private security contractors for Department of Defense employees there – officials from a now-defunct economic development arm called the Task Force for Business and Stability Operations (TFBSO).
The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) said “it is unclear what benefit the US received” from the outlays, and that the expenditures appear to have been made without a prior cost-benefit analysis.
[Read the letter from SIGAR to the secretary of defense]
SIGAR John Sopko said that TFBSO could have saved taxpayers “tens of millions of dollars” if it had chosen to house personnel “at DOD facilities in Afghanistan.” He made the statements in a Nov. 25 letter to Defense Secretary Ash Carter. The correspondence was published this week by SIGAR.
Included among the lavish services Sopko inquired about were luxury commodities provided by private military contractors.
“Triple Canopy provided TFBSO personnel with queen size beds in certain rooms, a flat screen TV in each room that was 27 inches or larger, a DVD player in each room, a mini refrigerator in each room, and an ‘investor villa’ that had ‘upgraded furniture’ and ‘western-style hotel accommodations,'” the comptroller noted.