ZABUL PROVINCE, Afghanistan – Forward Operating Base Lagman is the first military base in Afghanistan to entirely eliminate the circulation of U.S. dollars in response to a July 2010 fragmentary order to reduce the amount of U.S. cash flowing through Afghanistan.
“Since June, we’ve actually been able to retrograde out of theater almost $2 million,” said Capt. Jonathan Oblon, a soldier from Gainesville, Fla., and the commander of Bravo Detachment, 82nd Financial Management Company. “That’s $2 million that won’t be making it out onto the local economy.”
Using U.S. currency instead of host nation currency actually hinders the coalition efforts to create a strong government supported by a stable economy.
“Reliance on U.S. currency in theater devalues the Afghan currency and undermines their efforts to establish a strong currency to be exchanged on the open market,” said Oblon. Eliminating the flow of U.S. cash will, “strengthen Afghanistan’s economy and their government’s legitimacy,” he said. “The transformation between currencies has begun the symbolic sovereignty of Afghanistan.”
Efforts originally focused on getting eagle cash card point of sales devices for vendors at the bazaar on base. POS devices are similar to debit card readers.
The finance detachment worked with the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston and discovered they could obtain point of sales devices for each one of the vendors without having to link them to a U.S. bank account. Instead, they take their POS machines to the finance office once a week and receive their earnings in Afghani.
“I’m really happy about the machine,” said Sayed Jan, a local vendor from Qalat, “because I get more clients since they can pay with their card. Before, they could only buy if they had cash.”
In order to accomplish their mission, Oblon and his team had to look beyond the bazaar vendors. Now, because of the new system setup, finance services are open to everyone.
“Never before have foreign services been able to use our finance offices,” said Oblon. “We kept arguing the fact that if we really wanted to get U.S. cash off the battlefield, we needed to open up to everybody, and we finally got that approval. Now, even the Romanians can get eagle cash cards. They deposit U.S. currency on the card and use it like a prepaid debit card. We’re the first finance office to do that.”
Making the switch from U.S. dollars to the eagle cash card has several benefits not only for Afghanistan, but the U.S. as well.
Since the Afghani is not globally recognized, the enemy relies heavily on U.S. dollars to finance their activities.
“The reduction of U.S. currency on the battlefield disrupts the enemy’s ability to go outside the country to purchase explosives and weapons to be used against U.S. and allied forces,” said Oblon, “and all that extra cash can now be spent on strengthening our own economy.”
Achieving their goal was not easy for the small finance detachment. There was a lot of bureaucracy and red tape to cut through, but they worked tirelessly and met their goal within six months. In May, they hit an important benchmark when they disbursed more Afghani than U.S. dollars, and by October, they were no longer disbursing any U.S. cash.
“It was a little bumpy at first, but it’s starting to get a lot better,” said Oblon. “DynCorp now pays all their local employees in Afghani. It was different at first, but now they’ve embraced it. All local contracts for everybody are paid out in Afghani, so no U.S. dollars are making it out there.”
According to a February 2010 report, there are about 400 U.S. and coalition bases in Afghanistan, including camps, forward operating bases and combat outposts. If each one of them followed the example set by FOB Lagman’s finance detachment and eliminated the circulation of U.S. currency, savings would reach into the billions of dollars.
| Date Taken: |
11.07.2011 |
| Date Posted: |
11.13.2011 03:36 |
| Story ID: |
79978 |
| Location: |
QALAT, AF |
| Web Views: |
212 |
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0 |
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