The State Department is struggling to auction off six cellular towers it spent $6.5 million building in remote areas of Afghanistan after abandoning the rural telecom project as a failure, says
the author of a story on the unused, unwanted antennas.
One auction that was scheduled for Sept. 28 has already been postponed, Charles Wojcik, a former U.S. Marine Corps intelligence analyst writing for Blue Force Tracker, told "MidPoint" host Ed Berliner on
Newsmax TV Thursday.
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The towers went up at U.S. military outposts in remote provinces as part of a plan to make mobile telecom and broadcast services more widely available to Afghans, but threats from the Taliban against the sites contributed to the project's demise, said Wojcik.
The matter has prompted to an inquiry by the Office of Special Inpector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), whose mandate includes ferreting out waste, fraud and abuse among the billions spent after 9/11 on U.S. occupation and rebuilding, said Wojcik.
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