The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), a US government watchdog established in 2008 to oversee US reconstruction spending in Afghanistan, has issued a scathing final report on the US’s failed nation-building effort.
SIGAR will be closed down on January 31, 2026, and was required to issue a final report summarizing its findings over the years. The report said that from 2002 through mid-2021, the US government spent $144.7 billion on Afghan reconstruction, far more than it spent to help rebuild 16 European nations after World War II under the Marshall Plan in inflation-adjusted terms.
The report said the US also spent $763 billion on “warfighting” in Afghanistan, though the true cost of the US War in Afghanistan exceeds $2.3 trillion, a total that accounts for veteran care, interest paid on debt incurred to fund the war, and other factors.
Gene Aloise, SIGAR’s acting inspector general, said multiple factors led to the failure of the nation-building project, and that “early and ongoing US decisions to ally with corrupt, human-rights-abusing powerbrokers bolstered the insurgency and undermined the mission, including US goals for bringing democracy and good governance to Afghanistan.”
Aloise also noted the huge sum of money the US invested in the Afghan military, only for it to quickly fall to the Taliban. “Despite nearly $90 billion in US appropriations for security-sector assistance, Afghan security forces ultimately collapsed quickly without a sustained US military presence,” he said.
The report said that since its inception, SIGAR “identified 1,327 instances of waste, fraud, and abuse totaling between $26.0 billion and $29.2 billion” with waste being the most “prevalent issue identified, accounting for 93 percent of the total amount of waste, fraud, and abuse.”
SIGAR said that through its work, it found “more than $4.6 billion in savings to the US taxpayer, including recovered monies, questioned costs, and canceled expenditures.” The report also noted that the US has continued to provide aid to Afghanistan despite the Taliban taking over during its withdrawal in August 2021.
“Despite Afghanistan falling to the Taliban in 2021, the United States continued to be the nation’s largest donor, having disbursed more than $3.83 billion in humanitarian and development assistance there since,” SIGAR said.
