The Afghan War: Which Side Is DOD On?

Telling us how many dollars have been spent on the war in Afghanistan is fundamental to the Department of Defense’s (DOD) effort to garner public and congressional support for prosecution of the war.  It should also be a simple question.  It is not. 

The Department of Defense (DOD) testified to Congress on July 31, 2007 that the war in Afghanistan had cost $78.1 billion. The seeming precision of the decimal point notwithstanding, the number is laughably inaccurate. Here’s why:

• The 78.1 billion is DOD “obligations” as of May 2007.  Obligations are neither Congress’s appropriations nor the amount DOD has actually spent. Instead, DOD describes them as “orders placed, contracts awarded, services received, or similar transactions … that will require payments….”  In short, obligations are what DOD thinks it might spend.  For DOD’s obligations for Afghanistan going as far back as 2001, there has been no effort by the department to document what was actually spent.

• The obligations declared by DOD for Afghanistan are not just for Afghanistan. They are for Operation Enduring Freedom, which includes Afghanistan but also DOD operations in the Horn of Africa, the Philippines, and “elsewhere” (DOD’s term). The Defense Department has not informed the public, or apparently even Congress, how those costs break down. 

• DOD’s obligations also do not include transfers of funds from regular, annual appropriations from the non-war part of the DOD budget. These may be as much as $7 billion for both Iraq and Afghanistan. There is also an additional $5.5 billion that analysts at the Congressional Research Services (CRS) believe was made available for expenditure in Iraq and Afghanistan but which no one has been able to track.

• DOD’s figures also do not include classified intelligence activities. According to CRS, Congress appropriated $27 billion for intelligence efforts related to both Iraq and Afghanistan. The breakdown between the two is unknown to the public and perhaps to Congress.

• DOD’s figures also do not include the costs incurred by the State Department for diplomatic operations and reconstruction aid in Afghanistan and it does not include costs to the Veterans Administration (VA) to care for the US wounded coming home from there. The future VA cost to care for Afghan War veterans is only beginning to accrue now; it will be many billions of dollars.

• Funding for Iraq and Afghanistan has included huge amounts that have little or no real relationship to the wars. This spending includes piles of money for C-17, C-130J, V-22 and other aircraft that would see the skies over either theater only if the wars are still raging three to five years from now when these aircraft actually come off their production lines. Several billions of dollars have also been requested to fund the Army’s reorganization into “modular” brigades – a plan that precedes the wars by several years and that would be funded without them. Despite their weak relationship to the fighting, this and other problematic spending has all appeared in Congress’ “emergency” appropriations for the wars and, thus, should be included in the accounting of the funding for them.

• DOD has combined whatever records it retains for money spent in Afghanistan with the money spent for all other DOD purposes. As such, the money actually spent for Afghanistan – and Iraq – cannot be separated and identified; it is unknown today, and thanks to DOD’s record keeping it is unknowable for the ages.

Surveying this fiscal junkyard in its May 18 report to Congress, “Global War on Terror: Reported Obligations for the Department of Defense,” the Government Accountability Office (GAO) termed DOD’s spending data on the wars “to be of questionable reliability” and “should be considered approximations.” The auditors at GAO are well practiced at understatement on such subjects.

Rather than just curse the darkness, CRS has attempted to sort through the morass to make estimates of what has been available to DOD for Afghanistan under the moniker Operation Enduring Freedom. The latest results, from CRS’ “The Cost of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Other Global War on Terror Operations Since 9/11, Updated July 16, 2007,” are shown in the table below -

Appropriations Estimated by CRS for Operation Enduring Freedom, $Billions, Current Dollars, by Fiscal Year

	2001	2002	2003	2004	2005	2006	2007	2008	Total
DOD	9.0	11.0	14.0	12.4	18.0	17.9	34.7/a	26.0	142.9
Foreign Aid & Diplomatic Operations	0.3	0.5	0.7	2.2	2.8	1.1	2.1	4.8	14.5
VA	0	0	0	0	0	0	0.1	NA	0.1
Total	9.3	11.5	14.7	14.5	20.8	18.9	36.7	30.8	157.4

a: The $17.8 billion increase from 2006 to 2007 reflects a $5.5 billion increase in the costs to equip and train Afghan security forces ($1.9 billion in 2006; $7.4 billion in 2007) and $510 million for 7,200 additional US troops.  CRS was unable to identify a justification for the remaining $11.8 billion in additional costs.

Being a professional and ethical piece of work, the CRS study explains its own limitations and uncertainties.  Those include the unknown amounts for Operation Enduring Freedom that are not for Afghanistan but for the Horn of Africa, the Philippines, and “elsewhere.” They also include an apportionment of costs for Congress’ extraneous appropriations for aircraft and other items unlikely ever to be deployed, pre-existing Army reorganizations, and such. Thus, for an accounting of strictly defined war costs in Afghanistan, the CRS study actually is an approximation.

On the other hand, DOD’s assertion of just $78.1 billion for the Afghan war is so full of holes and misinformation that it has no credibility. Based on the far more complete and transparent CRS analysis, DOD’s numbers are literally about half right.

The Chinese war philosopher, Sun Tzu, said –

If you know others and know yourself, you will not be imperiled in a hundred battles;

If you do not know others but know yourself, you win one and lose one;

If you do not know others and do not know yourself, you will be imperiled in every single battle.

Even with the help of CRS’ analysis, our knowledge of a fundamental element of the war in Afghanistan, its cost, is quite imperfect. Based on Sun Tzu’s prescription, it would appear that one of the biggest impediments to a favorable outcome in Afghanistan is the misinformation to Congress and the nation from the Department of Defense.

Winslow T. Wheeler worked for Republican and Democratic senators and the Government Accountability Office over a 31 year career on Capitol Hill.  He joined the Center for Defense Information in 2002.