CERP - Was it Effective?

The RAND Corporation has published a paper that assesses the effectiveness of the Commander's Emergency Response Program (CERP) in Afghanistan. The study was focused on the time frame of 2010-2013 when CERP was used to support tactical operations in the Afghan counterinsurgency campaign. The paper describes CERP's origins, history, and existing research on the utility of CERP in Afghanistan. Over 200 military personnel who were associated with CERP were interviewed. Some believe that CERP played an important and productive role; while others criticized the program as holding back Afghan governmental institutions from developing.

www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR1508.html

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CERP Funds Not Documented

One of the more successful development programs of the Afghan War was the use of Commander's Emergency Response Program (CERP). Unfortunately, due to faulty record keeping, much of the program is under a cloud - the U.S. forces are having trouble accounting for where a lot of the money went. This doesn't mean that the money was wasted (although I am sure a lot of that happened); it just means that it is hard to tell what it was spent on. This is not a surprising development. One of the problems with a unit rotation (instead of individual rotations) is that continuity is lost, electronic data files are purged, and units are forever reinventing the wheel. CERP managers, usually the Civil Affairs bubbas, were in the learning mode the first part of their rotation and sometimes they didn't get a great hand-off from their predecessor about CERP. Small wonder there are problems following the money. Read more in James Rosen's article of the McClatchy Washington Bureau dated April 23, 2015 entitled "More than $1 billion in U.S. emergency reconstruction aid goes missing in Afghanistan".
www.mcclatchydc.com/2015/04/23/264136/more-than-1-billion-in-us-emergency.html

Only 57% of CERP Funds Spent in Past Six Years

Members of Congress and the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) are puzzled why the Department of Defense keeps asking for more money to spend in Afghanistan on reconstruction and development when their track record for spending Commander's Emergency Response Program (CERP) funds is less than stellar. According to records only 57% of the CERP funding has been spent over the past six years. There are some camps that believe CERP is an outdated process and that money should be funneled through the Afghan ministries or go to big projects. However, there are others that say CERP is the way to go as it is for small projects with an immediate impact that can be completed in a timely fashion with less opportunity for corruption. Read more in "Watchdog: US reconstruction funds go unspent in Afghanistan", Stars and Stripes, January 23, 2014. Read the letter from SIGAR to COMISAF regarding a request for information about the Commander's Emergency Response Program in Afghanistan. The letter mentions that only $43.5 million of $200 million appropriated for CERP were obligated by DoD before the funds expired.