Watchdog: Afghan contractor’s shoddy work has put troops at risk from IEDs

The U.S. inspector general in Afghanistan warned the military Thursday that protections against improvised explosive devices (IEDs) on a major highway in Afghanistan were inadequate and posed a threat to troops.

John Sopko, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), issued a safety alert to U.S. commanders warning that the agency had identified potentially “significant contract fraud” from an Afghan contractor that was supposed to protect against roadside bomb attacks.

Sopko wrote in a letter to U.S. Afghan commander Gen. John Allen and U.S. Central Command commander Gen. James Mathis that grates designed to block insurgents from entering culverts and planting IEDs were either not installed or are defective.

“Through our preliminary investigative work, we estimate that a large number of culvert denial systems might have been falsely reported by Afghan contractors as complete when, in fact, the denial systems were not installed or were installed in a defective manner, rendering them ineffective and susceptible to compromise by insurgents seeking to emplace IEDs,” he wrote.

Sopko said that it was a particular issue in one specific location in Afghanistan, but he said the agency is “concerned that this problem may be more widely spread throughout Afghanistan.”

Officials at SIGAR did not identify the Afghan contractor that received the $361,680 contract, citing an ongoing criminal investigation into the matter.

The officials declined comment on whether the failure had led to any IED attacks in Afghanistan.

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