US Military bases were left damaged after housing thousands of Afghans refugees in the country.
According to the reports, the bases have incurred almost $260 million in damage, the inspector general from the Pentagon recently found.
To make matters worse, several rendered buildings in the said bases have been left unusable for the US troops until significant repairs to walls and plumbing are made.
The report came after the United States Air Force under the Biden administration evacuated a massive number of Afghanistan people into the country over the last two weeks of August 2021.
Last year, the country airlifted 120,000 people from Afghanistan into the US in just 17 days after the Talibans overthrew the previous government. US aircrafts were then deployed and delivered tens of thousands of those Afghans initially to bases in Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Spain, Italy, Bahrain and Germany.
According to the report that was released on Wednesday by the Defense Department’s inspector general, the “services racked up about $260 million in needed repairs after housing more than 80,000 Afghan refugees at U.S. military bases between summer 2021 and 2022,” Military Times revealed.
Military bases that housed tens of thousands of Afghan refugees in the US incurred almost $260M in damages, rendering some buildings unusable for troops until significant repairs to walls and plumbing are made, the Pentagon's IG found.https://t.co/GQzapPex3p
— Stars and Stripes (@starsandstripes) December 23, 2022
The Afghans were airlifted from Kabul before the US left Afghanistan for good in the final weeks.
The Afghans who had been rescued and evacuated had received housing, medical care and resettlement assistance.
“DoD installations sustained millions of dollars in damages and depleted supplies that affected their normal operations and military readiness. The DoD should have risk assessment procedures in place to identify and plan for future temporary housing and facility usage operations, such as OAW and OAR, so installations can return to normal operations in a timelier manner,” the report found.
Moreover, the Pentagon also discovered that some of the repairs requested were located outside the allowable scope of reimbursement which includes the roads at the Marine Corps Base Quantico, Virginia, or to repair the air field at Ramstein Air Base, Germany.
The report also revealed that the most reported damage was at Fort McCoy, Wisconsin, which housed nearly 13,000 Afghans at an estimated cost of more than $145 million.
“[Numerous] facilities and equipment were overused, damaged, and remained in various degrees of disrepair, resulting in a costly maintenance effort,” according to the report.
“The majority of the costs in the Fort McCoy estimate come from reported significant damages to the 213 buildings housing Afghan refugees. Fort McCoy reported that all of the barracks needed repairs or replacement of walls, ceilings, floors, doors, bathrooms, plumbing, electrical systems, heating, ventilation, air conditioning systems, and exterior siding,” the findings added.
“Fort McCoy’s reported cost estimate is over three times the reported cost of Fort Pickett and Camp Atterbury combined, while housing only 12,706 Afghan refugees. Due to the high costs of the Fort McCoy estimate, we have concerns over whether the reported damages to the barracks and other structures at Fort McCoy were a result of the OAW mission or were pre‑existing to OAW,” the report continued.
