© news.yahoo.comAfghanistan Pentagon, built on shaky ground.
When the next major earthquake hits Afghanistan, could it leave the leadership of the Afghan military buried under five stories' worth of rubble? John F. Sopko, the special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction, does not rule it out. In an audit set for release Thursday, Sopko said
the new $155 million Afghan military headquarters, funded by U.S. taxpayers, may not withstand the Big One."Although the building generally met contract requirements and appears well built, we found some construction deficiencies that may have safety implications . . . in the event of an earthquake," the inspector general wrote to U.S. military leaders. Sopko was referring to engineering standards that call for the
foundations of large buildings to be segmented, allowing movement to be diverted in multiple directions. That would lessen the chance of large structures shaking to the point of collapse. In this case, the new jewel of the Afghan military — a structure often referred to as the Afghan Pentagon —
does not even meet the standards of the American Society of Civil Engineers, the report says.
The document is the latest question to be raised about how the
United States spent more than $68 billion in funding for Afghan security forces since 2001, including $6 billion for bases and buildings. When the new Defense Ministry headquarters was proposed in 2009, it was slated to cost about $49 million. But the project encountered numerous delays and cost overruns, in part because the Afghan military kept adding new features to the project. By 2014, the project had become so expensive that the U.S. military had effectively run out of money to complete it, prompting a stop-work order.
But Congress replenished the funds, and the building was completed this past summer. The 516,000-square-foot structure features a 1,000-seat auditorium, state-of-the-art command-and-control centers, a dining hall, a library and conference rooms. Sopko said the lack of adequate structural support represents a glaring oversight, considering Afghanistan's history of significant earthquakes.
As any resident of Kabul can attest, there can be multiple jolts in a single week. In the past four months, the maze of fault lines in northeastern Afghanistan produced two earthquakes with a magnitude of 6 or greater, including a 7.5-magnitude temblor in October. In 2002, a 7.2-magnitude earthquake flattened dozens of buildings in Kabul.
Comment: Afghani 'Pentagon' made by the USA is wrought with 'faulty' integrity, structural instability, cracks in the facade, code violations, is disjointed, unaligned, with glaring oversights and, all-in-all, not much left to hang onto when things finally shake out. A metaphor for its builder?