Aug 10, 2017

A State Department review that faulted the agency for failing to comply with its own policies for overseeing bomb disposal grants in Iraq, Lebanon and Afghanistan will not impact ongoing efforts to remove improvised explosive devices (IEDs) left behind by the Islamic State (IS), officials say.

Released Aug. 9, the report from the Office of the Inspector General found that the State Department did not develop required strategies to mitigate security threats for 10 out of 28 (36%) “high-risk” grants that the US government handed out in the Middle East and South Asia since 2013. The audit also found that the agency failed to collect performance and financial reports from grantees in many instances.

The US government has granted more than $2.6 billion to destroy excess stockpiles of conventional weapons in 95 countries since 1993, according to the State Department. The awards allow nonprofit organizations to conduct demining and dispose of unexploded ordnance, a mission that has become particularly critical in Iraq as the US-led military coalition attempts to secure the country from IS.

The State Department’s Bureau of Political-Military Affairs, which manages US weapons disposal programs, said it agreed with six out of seven of the report’s findings, which included stronger risk assessments and internal checks and balances to keep grants on track.

"This is the State Department’s own inspector general telling them their goals need to be achievable,” John Ismay, a senior crisis adviser for Amnesty International and a former US Navy explosive ordnance disposal officer, told Al-Monitor. “They want it to be quantifiable and less fuzzy. But there are areas where even with tons of resources and lots of manpower applied, there’s a persistent problem.”