“Deep fryers? Really?” said Lt. Col. Rafael Paredes, deputy commander of the 172nd Infantry Brigade.
This is Wayyyyyyyyy beyond absurd.
ZARGHUN SHAHR, Afghanistan–In a dusty valley here, construction workers are racing to finish a fiber-optic-equipped military base for a wood-burning army.
The $89 million U.S.-funded forward operating base, called Super FOB, is being built to house the Afghan army brigade that patrols Paktika province, along the contentious Afghanistan-Pakistan border.But Super FOB is being completed, and due to be expanded, after the U.S. and its allies have decided the Afghan security forces should be about a third smaller than envisioned when the base was conceived by U.S. and Afghan strategists.
The base, already more than three years behind schedule, is so elaborate it will require fuel and technical skills that many U.S. officers doubt the Afghan army will possess once American troops withdraw.
It is also being built to American specifications, with a huge, propane-powered kitchen whose stoves the Afghans say they won’t use. Instead, they are getting wood stoves designed for their tastes.
The U.S. has funded dozens of bases for Afghan army units. The bill has come to $6.7 billion in projects completed, under way or planned since fiscal 2005.
Col. Edward Bohnemann, commander of the 172nd Infantry Brigade, tried last summer to kill a plan to spend an additional $43 million to expand the capacity of the 300-acre Super FOB to house two more Afghan battalions, according to his spokesman. The troops would be better positioned elsewhere, Col. Bohnemann argued, according to his spokesman.
His entreaties went nowhere.
Super FOB will be finished in June, according to a spokesman for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, which is in charge of the U.S.-funded base-building operation. The expansion project will be completed next spring, and is now expected to cost $25 million, bringing the total base cost to roughly $114 million, the spokesman said.
“Super FOB is no more unique” than any of the other 16 brigade bases now in various stages of construction, said Lt. Cmdr. Robert Wadsworth, a NATO engineering officer. Six corps-size bases are being set up, each with a $300 million to $350 million price tag.
Super FOB was conceived and contracted in the early stages of the decade-old war, when NATO envisioned an Afghan army based in garrisons built to Western standards.
The base contains 122 buildings, many with lowered ceilings that absorb sound, terrazzo floors and forced-air heating and cooling. Fiber-optic Internet service is on its way. The hand-built stone wall surrounding the base cost $2.5 million.
There is a wastewater plant, a soccer field with bleachers, an underground sewer system and a fire station. The kitchen has separate fish-prep, chicken-prep and beef-prep areas. It also has deep fryers, a salad room and sneeze-guarded, stainless-steel service lines.
Afghan military cooks traditionally do their food preparation on the floor, and prefer to make large pots of rice and meat stew. When Afghan commanders inspected construction recently, they complained that the U.S.-supplied propane stoves are too small to hold such large pots. Now the contractor is installing a kitchen annex with 10 wood-burning stoves set into the ground that Afghan cooks can stand on as they stir.
“We require a different way of cooking,” Gen. Zemaray says. He predicts the Defense Ministry will issue enough diesel fuel to run Super FOB’s generators, and says he has asked Kabul to send him a 71-man technical team able to maintain the sewage-treatment facility, power grid and other advanced systems. NATO, meanwhile, is training Afghan technicians to maintain the new bases.
Gee, Gen. Zemaray, sorry we the sappy taxpayers in America didn’t get this right for you. Maybe we should cook your goat stew for you, and serve it on silver platters? Would that satisfy you?
$7 Billion dollars for Afghan army bases. Bases that likely will be overrun by the Taliban, al Qaeda, Pakistan ISI, haqqani group (take your pick) within five years.
Thanks, Congress!!
What’s the ROI here for us, Congress? Providing deep fryers for the Afghans prepares them for fantastic free market KFC’s in Kabul??? High speed fiber optic internet? Why!? They cannot read!!!
In the end, chalk this right up there with the insidious, continual waste of money by the MIC we’ve been reading about now for decades… the $100 hammers, $300 toilet seats, etc.
This is hideous.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303610504577420232465796466.html?mod=googlenews_wsj