America’s Unfinished Prison in Afghanistan Is a Filthy Nightmare
Renovations incomplete after five years and $20 million
Pul E Charkhi Prison, on the eastern outskirts of Kabul, is a place you dont want to be. Once a notorious dungeon during the Soviet occupation, the prison emerged as one of the principal jails for Taliban prisoners captured by the United States. The State Department attempted to renovate the prison, but its still monumentally terrible. Corruption involving the contractors is the chief culprit for the prisons problems, according to a recent report from the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstructiona congressionally-mandated watchdog agency. Worse, graft became such a problem, the department halted work in 2010. The result is a prison that has improved in some areas, but remains overcrowded and lacking basic infrastructure.
SIGAR also released photographs showing the bleak, filthy and crowded conditions. Theres also moments of the darkly absurdsuch as a sign illustrated in comic style instructing illiterate guards not to beat their prisoners. The Soviet Union funded Pul E Charkhi in 1973. It wasand still isthe largest prison in Afghanistan. Originally built to hold 5,000 inmates, today it houses 7,400. Space is so limited that prisoners sleep in the halls. The State Department identified it as a problem site and hired Al Watan Construction Companyan Afghan firmto renovate the prison in June 2009. After some negotiations, AWCC agreed fix up the dilapidated prison for $20.2 million.
Less than a year later, State canceled the contract. Officials worried that AWCC wasnt doing its job. They were right. The Afghan construction company cut every corner they thought they could get away with. Under the terms of the cancellation, State still had to pay AWCC for all its costs up until the date of cancellation$18 million of the original $20 million. State then paid an independent contractor nearly $1 million to assess the damage. So how far did the $18 million go? According to SIGARs report, AWCC completed approximately 50 percent of the required renovation work. So half. AWCC spent most of their budget and did half the job.
At that pace, AWCC would have had to ask for more money to finish the work. Money theyd spend doing a half-ass job. It wasnt just that AWCCs construction was too expensive and time consuming
it was awful. The company failed to complete the backfill trenches, leaving gaping wounds in the land next to mounds of dirt. Broken and defective fixtures littered the halls. Roofs and gutters werent properly installed, resulting in water damage to the paint and walls. AWCC installed six generators, but never plugged them in. The contract required the company to repair the facilities many roofs using metal trusses. They cheaped out and used wood instead. Sometimes, AWCC didnt even bother to replace faulty portions of the roof. They just slathered new roofing material over the rotten old wood.
Read more: https://medium.com/war-is-boring/take-a-photo-tour-of-americas-unfinished-prison-in-afghanistan-78a2155ae8dd
Our tax dollars down the drain.
adirondacker
(2,921 posts)become the "new" way yet again to use public taxpayer dollars to feed the oligarchs. Actually, I don't think it ever went away.