WASH­ING­TON-A gov­ern­ment watch­dog is look­ing in­to Afghanistan's prac­tice of tax­ing US com­pa­nies in­volved in Amer­i­ca's multi­bil­lion-dol­lar ef­fort to re­build the war-torn na­tion. The of­fice of the Spe­cial In­spec­tor Gen­er­al for Afghanistan Re­con­struc­tion will au­dit fees charged con­trac­tors by Kab­ul for sup­plies, ma­te­ri­als and oth­er items im­port­ed in­to Afghanistan or bought there, ac­cord­ing to an in­spec­tor gen­er­al memo ob­tained by The As­so­ci­at­ed Press.

The fees in­clude tar­iffs, cus­toms du­ties and oth­er tax­es that even­tu­al­ly come out of US tax­pay­er dol­lars be­cause they're charged to re­con­struc­tion projects run by the Pen­ta­gon, State De­part­ment or the US Agency for In­ter­na­tion­al De­vel­op­ment. "This is a step in the right di­rec­tion," said a state­ment from De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Rep. Pe­ter Welch and Re­pub­li­can Rep. Wal­ter Jones. "We're hope­ful this au­dit will and bring to an end the ab­surd prac­tice by the Afghan gov­ern­ment of tax­ing Amer­i­ca's ef­fort to re­build their coun­try.

"While such be­hav­ior may make sense in (Afghan Pres­i­dent) Hamid Karzai's world, it makes no sense to the Amer­i­can tax­pay­er," they said. The US has ap­pro­pri­at­ed rough­ly $89.42 bil­lion for Afghanistan re­con­struc­tion since 2002. But Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma is wind­ing down the ef­fort, hav­ing re­quest­ed $9.7 bil­lion for re­con­struc­tion for the bud­get year be­gin­ning in Oc­to­ber-a 34 per cent re­duc­tion from the $14.8 bil­lion Con­gress pro­vid­ed for 2012.

It's un­clear how much mon­ey has been col­lect­ed by Kab­ul from con­trac­tors do­ing the work - build­ing high­ways, schools, fa­cil­i­ties for Afghanistan's grow­ing se­cu­ri­ty forces and so on. But a num­ber of Amer­i­can con­trac­tors com­plained last year that they had re­ceived bills for over­due tax­es and were threat­ened with ar­rest and re­vo­ca­tion of their li­cens­es to op­er­ate there.