The U.S. government spent more money on its ambitious but ultimately futile project to create a stable and democratic Afghanistan than it did under the post-World War II Marshall Plan, which rehabilitated more than a dozen European countries ravaged by conflict.
The assessment came Wednesday from the Special Inspector for Afghanistan Reconstruction while releasing the government watchdog agency’s final report.
Congress appropriated more than $148 billion for Afghan reconstruction from 2002-25, of which $88 billion was spent creating a military that swiftly collapsed in August 2021 in the face of unrelenting pressure from the Taliban, Gene Aloise, the acting SIGAR, told the Defense Writers Group.
Mr. Aloise blamed corruption on the part of Afghan officials for most of the waste coming from America’s longest war. He compared the government in Kabul to a “white collar criminal enterprise.”
“Corruption affected everything,” he told reporters. “It turned the people against the government we were trying to build there.”
The auditors were sometimes blocked by U.S. agencies involved in the war effort. They often identified Afghan officials who were receiving bribes or kickbacks, only to be told they were working for the CIA or other government organizations.
“We were told ‘hands off. You can’t go after those guys,’” Mr. Aloise said. “We did what we could do, [but] there was a lot more that we knew about.”
Mr. Aloise said the Obama and Trump administrations were largely supportive of the auditors’ work. However, he slammed the Biden administration for shutting them out for a year following the collapse of Afghanistan.
“They wouldn’t talk to us. They wouldn’t work with our people. They told their people not to work with our people,” he said. “It was terrible. Never in 50 years have I seen such pushback. It took a bipartisan effort in Congress to get that work started again.”
