A bunch of goats: US lawmakers deride Pentagon’s US$800m Afghan investment scheme

US lawmakers have ridiculed a Pentagon programme that saw millions of taxpayer dollars sent to Afghanistan for investment initiatives that included importing rare blond Italian goats and the construction of a useless gas station.

The now-disbanded Task Force for Business and Stability Operations spent close to US$800 million to encourage investment in war-torn Afghanistan over a period of about five years.

But it suffered from poor oversight and much of the cash went to projects beset with waste, fraud and abuse, according to John Sopko, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction.

Sopko, who testified before senators from a special committee on military management, grabbed headlines in recent months with the release of a string of damning reports including one saying the military spent US$43 million on a natural-gas car filling station that should have cost a fraction as much.

Senator Claire McCaskill of Missouri called that endeavour “dumb on its face.”

“There’s never been any data presented that the ridiculous fuel station in Afghanistan helped anything... it was unsustainable and totally impractical,” she fumed, noting that the average Afghan earns only US$690 annually, while it costs US$800 to convert a car to run on natural gas.