The US Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) has issued a new report Thursday. The report concluded that the 15-year, $5 billion Afghan stabilization program has been a failure.
SIGAR concluded that the US had “unrealistic expectations” for the timeline of stabilizing Afghanistan, and that many of the programs they attempted actually backfired. He concluded the program in general had “mostly failed.”
The report said that the problem was that they focused on the most dangerous districts in Afghanistan first, where the poor security made it virtually impossible to follow through on building projects. When the US withdrew from those areas, the programs ended outright.
Other programs, which weren’t meant to increase Afghan government control, backfired even worse. In giving the corrupt Afghan government control over more districts, they exposed those areas to much greater corruption.
Not sure how the count was made, maybe just one program.
John Sopko, chief of SIGAR, has done an outstanding job trying to track the huge amounts of cash just thrown at the problem, often without cooperation or outright obstruction for the pentagon.
But $5 billion, that is pocket change on the scale of the total waste that has gone into that black hole of stupidity still without a strategy.
And the best news, there is not a damn thing anyone can do about it.