Send Link mailing list submissions to
[email protected]
To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit
https://mailman.anu.edu.au/mailman/listinfo/link
or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to
[email protected]
You can reach the person managing the list at
[email protected]
When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific
than "Re: Contents of Link digest..."
Today's Topics:
1. The $148 billion failure .. America?s attempt to rebuild
Afghanistan? (Stephen Loosley)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Message: 1
Date: Thu, 04 Dec 2025 23:03:17 +1030
From: Stephen Loosley <[email protected]>
To: "link" <[email protected]>
Subject: [LINK] The $148 billion failure .. America?s attempt to
rebuild Afghanistan?
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"
The $148 billion failure: Watchdog's final report excoriates America?s attempt
to rebuild Afghanistan
After nearly two decades of oversight, SIGAR will conclude its work early next
year.
By Thomas Novelly | December 3, 2025 06:03 PM ET
https://www.defenseone.com/threats/2025/12/watchdogs-final-report-highlights-us-govs-148-billion-afghanistan-reconstruction-failure/409909/
Afghanistan Defense Department
More than $148 billion was spent by the U.S. government in its failed attempt
to build a free Afghanistan, according to the final report by the official
watchdog office, whose careful documentation of waste and fraud, and its
warnings of Taliban resurgence, went largely unheeded.
For 17 years, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, or
SIGAR, tracked every dollar allocated to the country for security, development,
and humanitarian aid. As early as 2012, the office saw signs that the U.S.
government and military?s efforts were falling short.
?A lot of people knew this wasn?t working. This war wasn't working. In our
quarterly reports we would report on ?the number of districts falling to the
Taliban is increasing?,? Gene Aloise, SIGAR?s acting inspector general, told
reporters at a Defense Writers Group roundtable on Wednesday. ?Our quarterly
reports laid out what was happening, and you could predict the future based on
what we were saying.?
Aloise spoke as SIGAR released its final report, a 125-page ?forensic audit?
that condenses its thousands of pages of analysis and documentation of the
Afghanistan-reconstruction effort, which consumed more money than was sent to
Europe under the post-World War II Marshall Plan. Per the 2025 defense
authorization act, the office will close Jan. 31.
?The mission promised to bring stability and democracy to Afghanistan, yet
ultimately delivered neither,? the report said.
?The outcome in Afghanistan should serve as a cautionary tale for policymakers
contemplating similar reconstruction efforts in the future.?
?If there is one overarching lesson to be learned from a tragedy that unfolded
over 20 years, it is that any U.S. mission similar in context, scale, and
ambition must confront the real possibility of failure,? it said.
Aloise said the group?s independent nature and fierce pursuit of information
should also inform future watchdogs?but he fears they won?t.
Scrapped aircraft, vacant hotels, and corrupt contracts
Since SIGAR began its investigations in 2008, the watchdog has determined that
$26 billion to $29 billion allocated to Afghanistan reconstruction efforts
disappeared to waste, fraud, and abuse.
The U.S. government?s counternarcotics missions in Afghanistan accounted for a
large chunk of wasted funds. A June 2018 SIGAR report identified that despite
spending $7.3 billion on counter-drug efforts, the country was still ?the
world?s largest opium supplier.? and rampant corruption in the nation?s
narcotics industry ?made U.S. efforts to stabilize the country challenging, if
not impossible.?
Related articles
* Lessons from Afghanistan for NATO?s new Ukraine command
* Afghanistan shows the U.S. needs a doctrine not just for fighting wars, but
also leaving them
In 2015, SIGAR found that a $355 million USAID power plant was operating at
?less than one percent of its capacity.? The next year, it found that $85
million in loans meant to build a hotel and apartments across from the U.S.
Embassy in Kabul had not been repaid and had produced only ?abandoned empty
shells.? In 2018, it found that $486 million for 20 G-222 aircraft for the
Afghan air force, purchased for $486 million, fell short of operational
requirements. Some were collecting dust; others had been scrapped for ?six
cents per pound.?
Poor quality work by contractors also led to U.S. service member deaths, SIGAR
reported. In 2012, two soldiers were killed after an improvised explosive
device hidden in a culvert on a frequently used highway route detonated. An
Afghan-owned construction company tasked with installing grates over the
culverts did not follow contact specifications, which made them ?easy to
breach,? SIGAR found, adding ?the company?s deceit and shoddy work made it
possible for insurgents to bypass the grates and plant explosives that killed
the two soldiers.?
Through investigations of criminal activity, SIGAR agents helped convict 171
U.S. and Afghan defendants, which resulted in nearly $1.7 billion in fines,
restitutions, asset forfeitures, settlements and savings, the report detailed.
Aloise told reporters that the rampant corruption was perhaps the largest
factor that undermined the U.S. government?s efforts in Afghanistan.
?The biggest thing throughout the whole 20 years was corruption. Corruption
affected everything,? Aloise said. ?It turned the population against the
government that we were trying to build over there. It weakened the armed
forces, it weakened everything we tried to do.?
A farewell to arms and lessons learned
Catherine Lutz, the co-founder of Brown University?s Costs of War project, said
SIGAR?s on-the-ground investigations provided insight into areas of Afghanistan
that were inaccessible to members of the public.
One of the major revelations from SIGAR, Lutz said, was the overwhelming number
of reconstruction funds being spent on security.
?It's not great that not enough attention has been paid by the general public
to what was learned there,? Lutz said. ?My main concern is that the whole
project of reconstruction was misunderstood by the public as basically
humanitarian.?
About 60 percent of the $148 billion went to security initiatives, SIGAR?s
report said. Some of that went to buy arms and materiel for the Afghanistan
National Defense and Security Forces, included 96,000 ground vehicles, 51,180
general or light tactical vehicles, 23,825 humvees, nearly 900 armored combat
vehicles, 427,300 weapons, 17,400 helmet-worn night vision devices, and at
least 162 aircraft.
When the United States evacuated in August 2021, it left behind roughly $7.1
billion in equipment it had given the ANDSF, the Defense Department concluded.
All of it fell into the hands of the Taliban.
?As noted above, due to the Taliban takeover, SIGAR was unable to inspect any
of the equipment provided to, or facilities constructed for, the ANDSF
following the Afghan government?s collapse,? the report read. ?These U.S.
taxpayer-funded equipment, weapons, and facilities have formed the core of the
Taliban security apparatus.?
SIGAR interviewed numerous senior U.S. officials to glean lessons from the two
decades of involvement in Afghanistan. Several officials pointed to the 2020
Doha Agreement?the peace deal negotiated by the Taliban and the first Trump
administration?saying it ?ultimately sealed Afghanistan?s fate by undermining
the Afghan government?s legitimacy and emboldening the Taliban,? the report
read.
Similar to SIGAR?s quarterly reports, former U.S. officials pointed to likely
failures a decade ahead of the withdrawal.
?My sense was that by 2012, very few people thought the insurgency could be
defeated and that we could leave the Afghan government fully in control of
things,? Carter Malkasian, a former special assistant to the chairman of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff, told SIGAR in December 2021.
In May, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered a review of the U.S. military?s
withdrawal from Afghanistan. Aloise told reporters that SIGAR had not been
asked to support that probe.
Aloise said future efforts to create a watchdog for conflicts should look to
SIGAR?s independent authority as an example, but he remains doubtful it would
be recreated.
?Use SIGAR?s authorizing legislation as a model, because we were totally
independent. We were not under another agency or department,? Aloise said. ?We
were not shy about saying anything. We reported everything that we found. We
weren?t watered down, we weren?t toned down. You can use SIGAR?s authorizing
legislation as the basis for creating it. I don?t know if you?ll ever see that
again.?
Share This:
--
------------------------------
Subject: Digest Footer
_______________________________________________
Link mailing list
[email protected]
https://mailman.anu.edu.au/mailman/listinfo/link
------------------------------
End of Link Digest, Vol 397, Issue 2
************************************
