Since 2002, the Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) has worked on some 1,000 major construction projects in Afghanistan valued at more than $10 billion, but they’re not done so Corps personnel will still be there to finish projects still under way in December when U.S. troops are expected to leave, the commanding general said.
“We will be there beyond December ’14,” Lt. Gen. Thomas Bostick, Army Chief of Engineers and Commanding General U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said Tuesday during a roundtable. “The challenge is to complete all the work in the time that we have.”
Photo: U.S. Army
That means USACE employees would be there with or without a status of forces agreement (SOFA). If there is no SOFA, “I suspect there would be some sort of embassy just like we have in Iraq and through the State Department we would execute our mission using these Quality Assurance engineers who are Afghans,” Bostick said.
When combat troops leave in December, the engineers would not be able to rely on some of the security it has today from soldiers and civilian security companies.
After December there would be a smaller number of USACE civilian and military personnel who would guide the remainder of the construction program.
As that happens, the corps will rely on about 400 Quality Assurance Afghan engineers, he said, who will work in remote locations on ongoing projects where USACE employees cannot go without significant amounts of transportation or security. The corps will ensure these engineers are “protected and confident” as they work.
Quality Assurance engineers go through training and an assessment to check they’re capable of doing the work needed, he said. These engineers may initially go out with USACE engineers until there is a certain level of confidence in their ability, but then they operate independently to assess projects that must meet high standards, be of high quality and be done at a fairly rapid rate
“These are critical projects that we will be working on for a period of time,” he said. For example, key infrastructure projects such as the Dahla Dam improvement project and electricity power line projects.
The political and military leadership are aware of this, he said, and “it is work that really must be done for us to complete our mission.”
Photo: USACE
Once projects are completed in Afghanistan, the next big challenge is to ensure Afghans can maintain and operate them, Bostick said. The projects were constructed with Afghans and their culture in mind, knowing the projects weren’t built for “New York or Peoria,” they won’t have the bells and whistles that might be found in similar U.S. facilities.