Questionable spending

Afghanistan Waste Exhibit A: Kajaki Dam, More Than $300M Spent and Still Not Done

The five-day mission was dangerous and grueling. Thousands of troops hauled a 220-ton turbine piecemeal on trucks the entire length of a Taliban-infested province in southern Afghanistan. The feat was hailed by the British military as on par with the logistics of World War II and cost about $1 million.

The herculean effort was for USAID’s marquee reconstruction project, the Kajaki Dam, the lynchpin of an ambitious and expensive plan to bring electricity to southern Afghanistan.

That was 2008. The turbine has sat, unassembled, in rusting containers at Kajaki ever since.