A new report says billions of dollars of U.S. taxpayer money invested in Afghan reconstruction projects are not needed or wanted by the government of the war-torn country.
The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) presented the report to U.S. lawmakers Monday (March 1), citing the colossal waste.
The agency assessed that since 2008, nearly $7.8 billion has been used to build, fund or subsidize schools, prisons, a hostel, hospitals, roads, bridges and Afghan military facilities. The U.S. Department of Defense was the largest funder, paying $6.5 billion, the agency said.
SIGAR found that about $2.4 billion in “unused or abandoned assets were not used for their intended purpose, were damaged or were destroyed.”
In comparison, more than $1.2 billion of the $7.8 billion in U.S.-funded assets were used for their intended purpose, while only $343.2 million worth of assets were “maintained in good condition,” the report said.
The study quoted Special Inspector General John Sopko as saying that they determined that there is a pattern, that is, U.S. government agencies are “putting too much money too quickly into a country that is too small to absorb it.
Many U.S.-funded facilities and assets are provided to the Afghan government without even asking if they want or need the buildings or if they have the technical capacity to keep them running, in violation of numerous U.S. laws.
Sopko said, “The fact that so many capital assets have fallen into an unused, damaged or abandoned state should have been a major concern for the agencies funding these programs.”
According to SIGAR, since 2002 and through December 2020, Washington has allocated approximately $143 billion for Afghanistan reconstruction and related activities. The massive spending is aimed at fostering goodwill and jump-starting development that U.S. officials hope will help promote peace and stability in war-torn Afghanistan.
U.S. lawmakers established SIGAR in 2008 to identify waste, fraud and abuse in U.S.-funded programs in Afghanistan. The agency has been writing quarterly reports that often reveal the wide gulf between planning and actual contract execution.
SIGAR’s latest findings come as President Joe Biden is reassessing the peace deal his predecessor, Donald Trump, signed with the insurgent Taliban a year ago. The agreement pushed for a negotiated settlement to end the 19-year war in Afghanistan.
The agreement calls for the withdrawal of the 2,500 U.S. troops remaining in Afghanistan by May 2021 and the end of the longest-running U.S. war. The war has claimed the lives of more than 2,400 U.S. service members and cost the United States nearly $1 trillion.
SIGAR noted that the actual amount of waste “will almost certainly be higher” because the agency has not examined all U.S.-funded “capital asset projects” in Afghanistan.
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