By Luke Baker
BAGRAM, Afghanistan (Reuters) - The U.S. military hopes todouble its emergency funds for aid and reconstruction inAfghanistan this year, turning a once small-scale programmeinto a core part of its strategy to defeat Taliban insurgents.
If the U.S. Congress approves, commanders on the ground saythey could soon have as much as $410 million (206 millionpounds) to finance new schools, roads, bridges and smallhydro-electric power projects in rural areas, up from $206million in 2007.
The programme, known as the Commanders' Emergency ResponseProgramme, or CERP, gives mid-level officers the authority andfinancial freedom to launch local reconstruction projectswithout the usual lengthy approval process from above.
It has become a central to the military'scounter-insurgency strategy as it seeks to quell thestill-potent threat from the Taliban more than six years afterU.S.-led and Afghan forces removed the hard-line Islamists frompower after they refused to surrender al Qaeda leaders behindthe September 11, 2001 attacks.
The theory is that the sooner roads can be improved,clinics built, bridges repaired and power restored --especially in areas along the Pakistan border -- the lesslikely the Taliban are to be let back in to vulnerablecommunities.
British commanders in southern Afghanistan, where theTaliban is strong, have expressed envy in the past that they donot have the same funding or authority as their Americancounterparts to implement a similar strategy.
In the two years they have been based in Helmand province,British forces have often taken towns and villages after alengthy battle only to see them fall back into the hands of theTaliban shortly after they have withdrawn.
"This has got to be a two-fold process -- kinetic combatoperations to drive out the insurgents followed rightafterwards by the rebuilding work," U.S. Navy Lieutenant AshwinCorattiyil, the CERP manager for eastern Afghanistan, said onThursday.
"The prime reason CERP has the impact it does is its quickdelivery. It's small scale but quick impact."
Corattiyil said $210 million had been set aside forAfghanistan's CERP spending in 2008, and an extra $200 millionwas pending approval from Congress. The programme has expandedsteadily in Afghanistan since it was founded in Iraq in 2003with money seized by U.S. forces from Saddam Hussein's regime.
NGO CRITICISM
While sabotage, including the Taliban burning down schoolsand clinics and attacking Afghans employed to build new roads,has set back some projects, many more are pushing ahead.
U.S. army engineers have designed and helped build almost90 micro-hydro-electric plants in the past three years, aprocess which involves diverting a portion of a river's flow sothe water can power a generator that in turn provides basicpower.
Road-building, which costs anywhere from $100,000 perkilometre for a gravel road to $250,000/km for an asphalt one,has also become a major focus of engineering work.
"Roads can be a real money-maker," said Lieutenant-ColonelCraft Smith, the head of engineering for the U.S. military'sCJTF-101 task force, based in eastern Afghanistan.
"If you get a road opened up, you sometimes see the localsouks (markets) quickly doubling in size -- it helps the localeconomy to pick up, and it makes it easier to get Afghansecurity forces to some of these places which helps."
Under CERP rules, battalion commanders -- usuallylieutenant-colonels or majors -- can spend up to $25,000 attheir own discretion. Task force commanders -- usually colonels-- can spend up to $200,000 on their own, and above that figureapproval has to be sought from a commanding general.
Big projects require oversight by separate legal, financialand contracting teams, but that once lengthy process has beenstreamlined so that it now takes as little as two to threeweeks.
Some NGOs and aid agencies have raised concerns theprogramme gives reconstruction projects too much militaryemphasis, but Corattiyil says there is consultation with thirdparties -- NGOs and ministries in the Afghan government -- tomake sure there is agreement and as little overlap as possible.
(Editing by David Fox)
